Revitalizing America's Smaller Legacy Cities: Strategies ...

TOREY HOLLINGSWORTH AND ALISON GOEBEL

POLICY FOCUS REPORT LINCOLN INSTITUTE OF LAND POLICY GREATER OHIO POLICY CENTER

Revitalizing America’s Smaller Legacy Cities

Strategies for Postindustrial Success from Gary to Lowell

ISBN 978-1-55844-370-9 (paper)

ISBN 978-1-55844-371-6 (PDF)

Policy Focus Report/Code PF048

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America’s smaller legacy cities are essential to the well-being and economic prosperity of their states and the nation as

a whole. Places such as Akron and Allentown—older industrial centers with populations of less than 200,000 located

primarily in the Midwest and Northeast—face common challenges, from poverty and disinvestment in neighborhoods to

workforces whose skills do not match employer needs. Yet some play enduring roles in the national economy, and many

more are important to their state and region. In Ohio, for example, residents of metropolitan areas around small and midsize

legacy cities make up nearly a third of the state’s population and produce a third of the state’s gross domestic product.

While researchers and local leaders have identified strategies to jump-start revitalization in larger legacy cities like

Pittsburgh and Baltimore, less attention has been paid to how these approaches might transfer to Muncie or Worcester.

This report fills that gap. Combining rigorous research and data analysis with practical recommendations, the authors

identify eight replicable strategies that are helping smaller legacy cities find their competitive edge and transform into

thriving, sustainable communities:

Richly illustrated with case studies, graphics, and photographs, this report will be useful to practitioners looking for tools

to stimulate economic regrowth in smaller legacy cities: mayors and other local government officials; leaders of economic

and community development organizations; city planners; community outreach staff at hospital systems, universities, or

financial institutions; or researchers working on legacy city issues or economic restructuring in the industrial heartland.

• Build Civic Capacity and Talent

• Encourage a Shared Public- and

Private-Sector Vision

• Expand Opportunities for Low-Income Workers

• Build on an Authentic Sense of Place

• Focus Regional Efforts on Rebuilding

a Strong Downtown

• Engage in Community and Strategic Planning

• Stabilize Distressed Neighborhoods

• Strategically Leverage State Policies

Revitalizing America’s Smaller Legacy CitiesStrategies for Postindustrial Success from Gary to Lowell

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ABOUT THIS REPORT

Political wisdom has long observed, “As goes Ohio, so goes

the nation.” While pundits can respectfully disagree about

the enduring truth of that wisdom these days, the state is

still as close to a microcosm of the rest of the country as

any. Its mix of rural and urban areas mirrors the rest of the

country, as does the state’s collection of small, medium,

and large cities and towns. During my tenure as executive

director of Greater Ohio Policy Center (GOPC), from 2008

until 2016, it became increasingly clear that Ohio’s 20 small

and midsize cities were falling further and further behind

the larger municipalities and thus reflecting a similar

dynamic across the United States. These small to midsize

metros constitute a third of Ohio’s population and generate

a third of the state’s gross domestic product, and their

impact on the state’s prosperity as a whole is sizable. Their

struggles affect those who live in these cities as well as

those who don’t, and this pattern repeats in the country

at large. For that reason, GOPC developed an increasingly

intense interest in the future of these cities beyond

Ohio’s borders, across the Rust Belt—from Akron, Ohio, to

Syracuse, New York, and from Worcester, Massachusetts,

to Flint, Michigan. GOPC launched this report to understand

conditions and trends in these places and to learn lessons

from their unique challenges and accomplishments.


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Copyright © 2017 Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

All rights reserved.

Front Cover (top):

The Aiken Street Bridge and industrial skyline of Lowell,

Massachusetts. Credit: iStock.com/DenisTangneyJr

Front Cover (bottom):

Musikfest Café with a view of the former steel stacks in

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Credit: Jeff Reeder Photography

Back Cover:

Hamilton, Ohio, before and after downtown revitalization

efforts. Credit: Consortium for Ongoing Reinvestment

Based on case studies, extensive research, and data

analysis, this report found these smaller and midsize

places struggling after the Great Recession—with

fewer resources to deal with long-term poverty, chronic

unemployment, continued population decline, and other

related challenges—even while they attempt to leverage

the richness of their significant assets of unique physical

spaces, economic niches, sense of community and place,

and human capital. With its eight strategies, this timely

and extremely informative report lays out a compelling,

action-oriented framework for these places that are so

critical to the economic and social future of this country,

to help them gain sounder footing in the next decade of

the twenty-first century.

Lavea Brachman, JD, MCP

Vice President of Programs

Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation

Coauthor, Regenerating America’s Legacy Cities

(Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2013)

ISBN 978-1-55844-370-9 (paper)

ISBN 978-1-55844-371-6 (PDF)


ABOUT GREATER OHIO POLICY CENTER

Greater Ohio Policy Center (GOPC), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization

based in Columbus and operating statewide, develops and advances

policies and practices that value our urban cores and metropolitan

regions as economic drivers and preserve Ohio’s open space and farm-

land. Through education, research, and outreach, GOPC strives to create a

political and policy climate receptive to new economic and governmental

structures that advance sustainable development and economic growth.

ABOUT THE LINCOLN INSTITUTE OF LAND POLICY www.lincolninst.edu

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through

the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private

operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute

researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution

to economic, social, and environmental challenges. Through education,

training, publications, and events, we integrate theory and practice to

inform public policy decisions worldwide. With locations in Cambridge,

Washington, Phoenix, and Beijing, our work is organized in seven major

areas: Planning and Urban Form, Valuation and Taxation, International

and Institute-Wide Initiatives, Latin America and the Caribbean, People’s

Republic of China, the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, and the

Center for Community Investment.


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3 Executive Summary

7 Chapter 1 Introduction

8 Defining and Differentiating Small and Midsize

Legacy Cities

9 How Smaller Legacy Cities Differ from Large Legacy Cities

13 Why Small and Midsize Cities Matter

14 Methodology

16 Chapter 2 How Are Smaller Legacy Cities Faring?

17 Changing Economies

17 Continued Declines in Manufacturing Meet

Increasing Specialization

21 Substantial Growth in Health Care

22 Changing Roles in Regional Economies

23 Declining Economic Status of Residents

25 Diverging Trajectories

25 Differing Demographic Trends in Immigrants,

Older Adults, and Young Professionals

29 Varying Housing-Market Conditions

33 Chapter 3 Parsing the Trends

37 Factors Influencing Trends

Contents

3

7

16

33

40 Chapter 4 Promising Strategies for Success in Legacy Cities

45 Strategy 1: Build Civic Capacity and Talent

48 Strategy 2: Encourage a Shared Public- and


51 Strategy 3: Expand Opportunities for

Low-Income Workers

54 Strategy 4: Build on an Authentic Sense of Place

57 Strategy 5: Focus Regional Efforts on

Rebuilding a Strong Downtown

60 Strategy 6: Engage in Community and

Strategic Planning

62 Strategy 7: Stabilize Distressed Neighborhoods

64 Strategy 8: Strategically Leverage State Policies

65 Chapter 5 Conclusion and Recommendations

69 Appendix

70 References

72 Acknowledgments

40

65

HOLLINGSWORTH AND GOEBEL | REVITALIZING AMERICA’S SMALLER LEGACY CITIES | 3

America’s small and midsize legacy cities—primarily midwest-

ern and northeastern cities with 30,000 to 200,000 residents

and traditional economies built around manufacturing—

have long been central to building the nation’s middle-class

prosperity. Cities such as Flint, Michigan; Scranton, Pennsyl-

vania; and Worcester, Massachusetts, used to be places where

many immigrants from abroad and migrants from rural areas

could achieve a comfortable life through relatively low-skilled

work. Yet today, as the national economy continues to move

away from manufacturing, these cities are facing challenges

familiar to all postindustrial communities: entrenched poverty,

disinvestment in neighborhoods, and a workforce whose skills

do not match employers’ needs. While many smaller legacy

cities struggle with severe problems, they frequently fall under

the shadow of larger cities like Detroit or Cleveland in national

discussions about the future of these places.

Executive Summary

With support from Goodyear

and other partners, Akron is

redeveloping the historic East

End neighborhood as a business,

residential, and entertainment

center. Rendering courtesy of:

Industrial Realty Group, LLC

4 | POLICY FOCUS REPORT | LINCOLN INSTITUTE OF LAND POLICY

An earlier Policy Focus Report, Regenerating Amer-

ica’s Legacy Cities (Mallach and Brachman 2013),

detailed the challenges and opportunities faced by

larger legacy cities. As researchers and local leaders

have identified some strategies that can jump-start

revitalization in places like Pittsburgh and Baltimore,

little attention has been paid to how these strategies

might transfer to communities like Dayton, Ohio, or

Binghamton, New York. Many smaller legacy cities lack

critical assets such as major corporate headquarters

or large anchor institutions like those that have been

leveraged successfully in larger cities, so even proven

strategies will require adaptation and creativity.

Despite their current challenges, these smaller legacy

cities remain essential to the well-being and economic

prosperity of their states and the country as a whole.

Some of them still have enduring roles in the national

economy, and even more of them are important in their

state and region. Many serve as economic, cultural,

and service anchors for metropolitan areas that are

home to millions of people and that produce signifi-

cant economic outputs. In Ohio, for example, residents

of metropolitan areas around small and midsize

cities make up nearly a third of the state’s population

and produce a third of the state’s gross domestic

product (Greater Ohio Policy Center 2016). Additionally,

these metropolitan areas are home to a substantial

middle class, although recent trends mirror the na-

tional decline in the share of middle-class residents

in these areas.

This report portrays the particular problems and op-

portunities facing small and midsize legacy cities and

points out how they and their residents can prosper

and be resilient in the new economy. To establish how

these municipalities fared in the first 15 years of the

21st century, the authors collected demographic, eco-

nomic, and housing-market data for 24 representative

cities in seven states (see p. 9).

Key data findings include the following points:

• Small and midsize legacy cities underwent

substantial economic changes, particularly in

the continuing shift away from manufacturing

to increasing reliance on the health care and

education sectors. Unfortunately, many of

the jobs in these sectors are relatively low-

skilled and low-paying and do not appear to be

increasing most residents’ prosperity.

• The time frame of this study includes the

most challenging economic period for the

country since the Great Depression, and the

economic health of small and midsize legacy

cities clearly reflects that. Yet the effects of

the Great Recession are even more severe in

these places, with increases in poverty and

declines in household incomes greater than the

national rates. Even years after the official end

of the downturn, many cities have continued

to struggle with high unemployment rates and

seriously distressed housing markets.

• The legacy cities in this study demonstrate

considerable diversity. The clearest differences

in their trajectories are in their housing markets

and demographic trends, including population

growth or decline and the attraction and

retention of immigrants and young professionals.

This report looks at these trends and identifies which

cities have done well in recent years and which

continue to face challenges that make it difficult for

them to change their trajectory: many cities that were

performing poorly in 2000 continued to face serious

barriers in 2015. Regional location appears to influence

these trends, with cities in the Northeast faring

consistently better on many indicators than their peers

in the Midwest. Still, some cities in both regions have

seen real gains over the last 15 years, proving that past

trends do not have to dictate future performance.


To succeed in the future, these cities need to

realistically assess their current condition. They

must then consider how they can fit into the global,

national, and regional economy. Some of the cities

might be able to serve primarily as service centers for

their broader region. Others might find opportunities

to compete on the national or even global stage as

a regional entity or as a satellite to a larger city. In

any case, cities must have strong, cross-sectoral

leadership with an interest in supporting revitalization

efforts. This civic capacity will enable them to leverage

their economic position and to raise the quality of life

for all residents.

This report lays out eight strategies that are helping to

revitalize small and midsize legacy cities around the

country. No silver-bullet solution exists, and progress

proceeds in fits and starts. Nevertheless, the following

strategies have proven effective, as illustrated by the

“Strategies in Action” boxes in the text.

1. Build Civic Capacity and Talent:

For legacy cities, charting a path forward will

require strong leaders to envision and implement

necessary changes. For example, South Bend,

Indiana, is strengthening local leadership through

a fellowship program that places highly skilled

recent graduates in management-level posi-

tions in the private and public sector in order to

integrate them into the civic fabric early in their

careers (p. 45).

2. Encourage a Shared Public- and Private-

Sector Vision:

Local governments alone cannot solve the chal-

lenges facing cities. Private-sector leaders must

also “own the problem” of urban revitalization

and work collaboratively with the public sector. In

Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a group of private-sector

leaders stepped in to create and implement a new

economic development plan that reimagined the

city as a tourist hub (p. 48).

3. Expand Opportunities for Low-Income Workers:

Efforts to revitalize cities will not succeed if they

focus on higher-income people alone. Each city

must invest in creating greater access to oppor-

tunity for all its residents. Lima, Ohio, has created

an umbrella organization to coordinate workforce

development efforts and ensure that residents

are sufficiently trained for available jobs (p. 51).

4. Build on an Authentic Sense of Place:

Increasingly, highly skilled workers choose where

they want to live before searching for a job in that

place. To attract such workers and the jobs that

follow them, smaller legacy cities should build on

their historic sense of place. Bethlehem, Pennsyl-

vania, converted part of a closed steel plant into

an arts and cultural campus, which has become

a signature draw both for local residents and

outside visitors (p. 54).

In Lancaster, a group of private-sector

leaders stepped in to create and

implement a new economic development

plan that reimagined the city as a tourist

hub. Credit: Yarvin Market Journeys/

Alamy Stock Photo

6 | POLICY FOCUS REPORT

5. Focus Regional Efforts on Rebuilding

a Strong Downtown:

The fate of a city is clearly intertwined with that of

its surrounding region. Strong, vibrant downtowns

are a critical asset for the entire regional econo-

my. In Syracuse, New York, the local chamber of

commerce and the state have prioritized down-

town revitalization efforts to help create jobs and

attract talented workers (p. 57).

6. Engage in Community and Strategic Planning:

Competing visions for a city’s future cannot all

be executed, particularly where resources are

stretched thin. Community-wide planning can

help identify how to allocate limited resources

while laying the groundwork for further invest-

ment. Grand Rapids, Michigan, encourages

neighborhoods to create and maintain community

plans that help guide investment when new devel-

opment is set to occur (p. 60).

7. Stabilize Distressed Neighborhoods:

After engaging in community-wide planning, the

city must work to prevent further declines in

neighborhood stability and to rebuild local hous-

ing markets. Youngstown, Ohio, has used data

to pinpoint struggling neighborhoods and then

leveraged a variety of financial resources to triage

housing in poor condition (p. 62).

8. Strategically Leverage State Policies:

Some states have programs that target resources

to cities based on their size or level of economic

distress, while others focus on removing barriers

to market development. Local communities

can absorb outside resources best when local

leaders carefully guide implementation of state

policies to align with local goals and to spur

additional investment. In Ohio, the state autho-

rized counties to create local land banks that

in many cases were key local responders to the

vacancy and foreclosure crisis brought on by the

recession (p. 64).

Many of the innovative approaches identified in this

report implicitly acknowledge that economic growth

rests on addressing equity issues and promoting

business development simultaneously. Smaller legacy

cities are faced with the challenging—and exciting—

task of reimagining their form, function, and place in

the world as they work to rebuild functional economies

and create opportunity for their residents.

The strongest smaller legacy city in

the Midwest, Grand Rapids revitalized

its struggling downtown by gathering

representatives from the business,

government, and academic communities

and using data to create a new vision and

plan for the central business district.

Credit: iStock.com/DenisTangneyJr.


CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The challenges faced by smaller legacy cities loom

large in the American imagination. It’s no coincidence

that Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen chose Allentown,

Pennsylvania, and Youngstown, Ohio, respectively, as

symbols of the demise of a certain kind of American

dream. As the factories that helped build the country’s

middle-class prosperity shut down in the second half of

the 20th century, the two working-class musicians used

these cities as emblems of opportunity lost.

Among the most distressed cities in the

report, Youngstown lost nearly 10 percent

of its population between 2000 and 2015.

Credit: Ohio Stock Photography


More recently, the reports of worn-out infrastructure,

troubled finances, and human errors in Flint, Michi-

gan, have revealed a dramatic form of urban decline,

demonstrating how the most vulnerable populations

bear the brunt of dysfunction in smaller legacy cities.

The 2016 election once again brought these cities na-

tional attention as President Donald Trump loosened

the Democratic Party’s longtime grip on cities like

Scranton and Youngstown.

These cities serve as powerful symbols because

of their histories as opportunity centers for many

families and workers. In the late 19th and early 20th

centuries, immigrants from abroad and migrants from

the South flocked to these legacy cities because they

provided chances even for unskilled workers to build

a stable, middle-class life. But as prosperity in these

cities fell in the latter part of the 20th century, it be-

came harder for the next generation to join and remain

in the middle class, particularly for workers without

advanced training or degrees. Nationwide inequality

in job access and home ownership opportunities for

African Americans and other racial minorities were

laid bare in these places, while many white families

were able to move to the suburbs.

Yet the story of smaller industrial cities is not simply

one of loss. While some of these places have indeed

experienced overwhelming poverty, property aban-

donment, and economic decline, others have become

gateways for new immigrants or have reinvented

themselves as tourist destinations or as useful spokes

in their regional economies. Though all of these cities

are still experiencing significant challenges, some are

finding ways to reorient their economies and land use

for the 21st century. As people, capital, and corpora-

tions continue to concentrate in fewer places, small

and midsize legacy cities must creatively reimagine

their place in the world. The strongest of these cities

recognize that they cannot re-create the past. Instead,

they’re finding ways to embody a different narrative in

the American imagination: the reinvention story.

Defining and Differentiating Smaller Legacy Cities

Certain characteristics distinguish these cities from

their larger counterparts and from smaller cities that

do not have a significant industrial past. Small and

medium-sized legacy cities have between 30,000 and

200,000 residents and have lost substantial numbers

from their peak populations in the mid-20th century.

In all of them, manufacturing was the core of the

employment base and economic output, and none of

them has been primarily a college town or a suburb of

a larger city. While cities with similar histories exist

throughout the country, the majority of those fitting

these characteristics are in the Midwest and North-

east—the so-called Rust Belt of the United States

(see Figure 1).

In the 1880s, Scranton was the first U.S. city to operate all-electric

street cars, which carried workers to their jobs and homes. Credit:

Carol Highsmith/Wikimedia Commons


Physically, these cities often resemble their larger

peers. Midsize cities in particular often have a clearly

urban downtown core surrounded by a mix of residen-

tial neighborhoods, some stable and some afflicted

by disinvestment, as well as extensive suburban and

exurban development beyond the city’s boundaries.

Small cities may also have these physical features,

or they may be anchors of broader rural regions with

central cores that are less distinctly urban. Both

midsize and smaller legacy cities also share many of

the current economic and demographic challenges

faced by larger legacy cities. All legacy cities saw their

populations decline significantly in the second half of

the 20th century, with corresponding growth in poverty

rates and disinvestment in downtowns and urban

neighborhoods.

How Smaller Legacy Cities Differ from Large Legacy Cities

These smaller cities, however, have found it more

difficult to recover from decades of disinvestment

and the more recent shock of the Great Recession

than their larger counterparts. A recent report from

Greater Ohio Policy Center (GOPC) found that although

all of Ohio’s legacy cities continued to suffer after the

Great Recession, the state’s two large legacy cities,

Cleveland and Cincinnati, saw small signs of recovery

that were absent in most of the smaller legacy cities

(Greater Ohio Policy Center 2016). In general, opportu-

nities for regeneration in smaller postindustrial cities

have received less attention than those of larger cities

whose problems are equally dire.

Figure 1

Small and Midsize Legacy Cities Studied in the Midwest and the Northeast

Kalamazoo

Akron

Lima

Pontiac

Flint

DaytonHamilton

Youngstown

Scranton

Allentown

LancasterYork

Bethlehem

Camden

Albany LowellWorcester

Binghamton

Springfield

Syracuse

MICHIGAN

INDIANA

OHIO

PENNSYLVANIA

NEW YORK

NEW JERSEY

MASSACHUSETTS

Grand Rapids

South Bend

Muncie

Gary


Some recent research by members of the Federal

Reserve System has focused on strategies aiding

revitalization in those smaller cities. The Federal Re-

serve Bank of Atlanta produced a Small City Economic

Dynamism Index that measures the economic trajec-

tory of 400 regions centered around smaller cities.

The Industrial Cities Initiative of the Federal Reserve

Bank of Chicago, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s

research on Springfield, and the Federal Reserve Bank

of Philadelphia’s studies all explored promising ways

to help these cities improve their economic health and

either slow or reverse population decline. This work,

together with earlier efforts, represents an important

shift in legacy city research.

This emerging direction of research is important for

acknowledging the different kinds of resources that

can be leveraged for revitalization in smaller cities.

Strategies that work in larger cities may not be useful

in smaller ones that lack the critical mass of assets

possessed by their larger peers. Even if strategies are

directly transferable, implementing them may require

more creative sources of funding and leadership. Many

successful revitalization plans in large legacy cities

rely on large institutional anchors, such as major re-

search hospitals and universities, or locally headquar-

tered corporations, which are growing increasingly rare

due to the consolidation of major industries. The shift

of major corporate headquarters away from small and

midsize cities over the last 50 years has dramatically

changed the opportunities for economic growth and

private civic leadership in these communities.

At some point between 1960 and 2015, all but 4 of

the twenty-four smaller cities included in this study

were home to at least one Fortune 500 headquarters

(Fortune), shown in Figure 2. Many cities were home

to five or more such companies over this time frame.

Today, however, only half of the cities are still home

to a Fortune 500 headquarters, and only five retained

more than one (Fortune). The loss of these corporate

headquarters certainly represents a reduction in the

economic power of these cities, but it also signals

the decline of a built-in set of civic leaders. As dis-

cussed later in this report, a city’s ability to revitalize

requires leadership from a variety of actors, including

those in the corporate and private sectors, who have

the energy, resources, and prestige to help a city get

back on track.

Small and midsize legacy cities also face particular

challenges related to the consolidation of many major

industries, including airlines and banks. Researchers

Siegel and Waxman note that air travel from smaller,

The Federal Reserve Bank of

Boston has examined the unique

challenges and opportunities

facing Springfield and has

used that research to support

revitalization in smaller legacy

cities throughout its footprint.

Credit: Laura Masulis


Figure 2

Fortune 500 Headquarters in Small and Midsize Legacy Cities, 1960 to 2015

non-hub airports has become more time-consuming

and costly, which may compound the difficulty of

attracting or retaining major corporate headquarters

(Siegel and Waxman 2001). Additionally, the wave

of mergers in the banking industry means that fewer

small cities are home to bank headquarters. As

discussed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

in its Industrial Cities Initiative summary report,

these mergers frequently result in the loss of local

decision making and create a sense that banks

are no longer “of the community,” as bank headquar-

ters are increasingly concentrated in larger cities

(Longworth 2014).

Smaller cities are also less likely to be home to major

institutional anchors, such as universities and hospi-

tals, which have helped drive revitalization in larger

legacy cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Baltimore.

While some midsize legacy cities are home to im-

portant research institutions, such as the University

of Notre Dame in South Bend or the University of

Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, small

legacy cities are more likely to host smaller liberal arts

colleges, branch campuses of major research univer-

sities, or community and technical colleges. These

institutions are important for educating and employing

the local workforce, but they do not produce the spill-

over and multiplier benefits that larger institutions

do. While most small and midsize legacy cities have a

sizable and growing health care sector, few have major

research hospitals, whose economic benefits extend

beyond serving the local population’s medical needs.

Finally, few of these cities have foundations that

can undertake the kinds of interventions necessary

for large-scale revitalization. Community and family

foundations do play important roles in many smaller

cities, but these philanthropic organizations are not as

common as in large communities. The influence and

impact of smaller foundations vary dramatically by

capacity and endowment size, and they may be less

able to build financial resources and staff expertise in

small and midsize places.

Beyond the challenges mentioned above, a small-

er city’s size presents additional impediments. As

discussed by Siegel and Waxman (2001), the problems

associated with larger American cities, such as crime,

poverty, and neighborhood disinvestment, are also

found in the smaller ones, but most federal policy

Fortune 500Headquarters

1960–2014

Fortune 500Headquarters

2015

AKRON

ALBANY

ALLENTOWN

BETHLEHEM

BINGHAMTON

CAMDEN

DAYTON

FLINT

GARY

GRAND RAPIDS

HAMILTON

KALAMAZOO

LANCASTER

LIMA

LOWELL

MUNCIE

PONTIAC

SCRANTON

SOUTH BEND

SPRINGFIELD

SYRACUSE

WORCESTER

YORK

YOUNGSTOWN


makers focus primarily on either large urban areas

or very rural ones. Smaller cities, which may face as

much or more economic distress as their larger peers

or poor rural communities, often fly under the radar

of people and institutions with the power to assist

them. An analysis by Fox and Axel-Lute (2008) found

that small postindustrial cities, defined as places with

between 15,000 and 150,000 people in 2000, faced

more extreme economic conditions, both negative and

positive, than their larger peers. One subset of small

cities in their analysis experienced more population

and employment loss, regional sprawl, and poverty,

particularly for people of color, than legacy cities of all

sizes. But in another group of smaller cities, popula-

tion and employment grew, and poverty rates for black

and Latino residents were lower than in legacy cities

of all sizes.

Fox and Axel-Lute identify two important aspects of

land use that have particular impact on small and

midsize legacy cities: first, the percentage of land

owned by nonprofit organizations that produce no tax

revenue for the city and, second, the vacancy rate of

homes, industrial sites, and commercial structures.

Similarly, Siegel and Waxman note that brownfields

and other sites that require preparation for develop-

ment have an outsized impact on these cities because

their total amount of developable land is smaller, while

the capacity to remediate contaminated sites may be

more constrained. Additionally, the smaller staffs of

local government in small cities make it more difficult

for them to compete for major employers that could

help reinvigorate their economies. In a time when

corporations often make quick decisions about where

to locate their facilities, an already overwhelmed city

government may not be able to respond in time to

offer a potential employer persuasive economic

development incentives (Siegel and Waxman 2001).

Finally, it is harder for smaller cities to build a critical

mass of amenities that can attract new residents or

retain younger college graduates who may be drawn

to urban lifestyles.

Hamilton and other smaller legacy cities have inexpensive

historical homes and dense, pedestrian- and bike-friendly

downtowns that could satisfy the growing demand for urban living

and mixed-use neighborhoods, particularly among millennials.

Credit: Ohio Stock Photography

Smaller cities, which may face as much

or more economic distress as their larger

peers or poor rural communities, often fly

under the radar of people and institutions

with the power to assist them.


Why Small and Midsize Legacy Cities Matter

Despite the particular challenges they face, small and

midsize legacy cities are still important places for a

number of reasons. Some of them still have a role in

the national economy, and many serve as economic,

cultural, and service anchors for metropolitan regions

that are home to millions of people and produce

significant economic outputs. In Ohio, for example,

residents of the metropolitan areas surrounding small

and midsize cities make up nearly a third of the state’s

population and produce more than one third of the

state’s gross domestic product (Greater Ohio Policy

Center 2016).

The metropolitan areas around these cities throughout

the Midwest and Northeast are homes to a substantial

middle class, defined as a person with a household

income between two-thirds and double the nation-

al median household income. Based on analysis of

data from the Pew Research Center on the share of

residents in each metro in the middle class, regions

surrounding small and midsize cities have a larger

proportion of middle-class residents than the United

States as a whole (Pew Research Center 2016). Yet

since 2000, the share of middle-class residents in

these metros has declined (see Figure 3). Troubling-

ly, in about half of these smaller industrial metros,

formerly middle-class residents are more likely to be

slipping into the lower-income category than to be

moving up in rank. These cities’ metropolitan areas,

whose economies and trajectories are tied inextrica-

bly to their central cities, reflect the national trend of

growing inequality.

As described by Fox and Axel-Lute (2008), in spite of

their many challenges, these small and midsize cities

have great human potential as well as neighborhood,

historical, and natural assets. Many have an abun-

dance of inexpensive historical homes as well as

dense, pedestrian- and bike-friendly downtowns

that could satisfy the growing demand for urban living

and mixed-use neighborhoods, particularly among

millennials. Additionally, many of these cities have

relatively lower costs of living and higher quality of

life—a mixture not available in large, hot markets.

Because of their more manageable scale, these cities

could be excellent laboratories for developing more

equitable and sustainable models for community and

economic development.

Figure 3

Change in Share of High-, Middle-, and Low-Income Residents of Small and Midsize Cities, 2000 to 2014

0% 2%-2%-4% 4%-6%

High-IncomeResidents

Middle-IncomeResidents

Low-Income ResidentsU.S. Cities

Smaller Legacy Cities

Average Change (from 2000–2014)

0% 2%-2%-4% 4%-6%

High-IncomeResidents

Middle-IncomeResidents

Low-Income ResidentsU.S. Cities

Smaller Legacy Cities

Average Change (from 2000–2014)


1. In order to gain a broad perspective on how well

small and midsize legacy cities are faring, the

authors collected data on 65 cities, in seven mid-

western and northeastern states, that met the

following conditions:

• Had a population of 30,000 to 200,000 as of 2013.

• Lost a substantial portion of its population from

its mid-20th-century peak through 2000, even

if the population grew after that year. (Though

Grand Rapids gained population between 1950

and 2000, it was retained in the study because

of its instructive lessons for regeneration and its

other legacy-city characteristics.)

• Had a significant history of manufacturing and

did not function primarily as a college town or

suburb of a larger city.

2. From the initial set of 65 cities that met these

criteria, the authors selected 24 representative

cases to analyze more deeply and to survey for

successful revitalization strategies.

3. The authors collected U.S. Census data from

2000, as well as American Community Survey

(ACS) five-year estimates for 2009 and 2015 for

all 24 cities in the following categories:

• Population

• Foreign-born population

• Young professional population

(percentage of city residents aged 25 to 34 who

have at least a college degree)

• Percentage of city residents working in the city

• Unemployment rate

• Labor-force participation rate

• Median household income

• Poverty rate

• College-degree attainment

• Long-term housing vacancy rate

• Owner-occupancy rate

• Percentage of home sales with a mortgage

Mortgage information came from PolicyMap,

which aggregates Home Mortgage Disclosure Act

data. The most recent year available was 2014.

• Median home value

Researchers have questioned the accuracy of

these values as reported to the ACS, because

they come from survey takers’ estimates, not

government data, and thus have high margins of

error. To correct for this, the authors compared

trends in median home values over time instead

of the raw numbers.

• Median rent

Rental costs in the ACS have the same kinds of

weaknesses as median home values and thus

were treated the same way.

• Employment industries

• Occupations

4. From these data, the authors calculated the

percentage change in each category from 2000

to 2015 and then in two subsets within that time

period: 2000 to 2009 and 2009 to 2015. The data

were broken into subsets to get a better sense

of the impact of the Great Recession on the

trajectories of each city.

The authors used the quantitative data to group the

cities into high-, moderate-, and low-performing cat-

egories based on their current conditions and trajec-

tories over time. These groupings are intended only to

compare the cities’ trajectories and to help identify

factors contributing to their success or continued

challenges. Full explanations of the grouping process

can be found in the Appendix.

In addition, the authors collected data on employ-

ment and jobs in 2002 and 2014 from the U.S. Census

Bureau’s OnTheMap application. The earliest year

available through OnTheMap was 2002, and as of Jan-

uary 2017, the 2015 data had not been released. Data

from 2002 are not available for the cities in Massachu-

setts (Lowell, Springfield, and Worcester), which are

therefore excluded from this analysis.

Methodology



A strong sense of place must be rooted in authenticity; trying to

re-create Portland or Austin in Dayton would undermine its own

Rust Belt chic with a low cost of living and a good quality of life.

Credit: iStock.com/


CHAPTER 2

How Are Smaller Legacy Cities Faring?

A number of factors are driving changes in all small and

midsize legacy cities, and many of those factors are beyond

the control of the individual cities. Massive nationwide

demographic and economic shifts, including the aging of

the population, the shift away from a manufacturing-based

economy, the shrinking of the middle class, and the in-

creasing economic power of coastal regions compared

to the Midwest are playing out in rather dramatic ways.

This chapter, based on analysis of data from 2000 to 2015,

explores the changing contexts in which these cities are

operating.

In the Dayton market, half of the buyers

are young people—more than double

the percentage in hot markets like San

Francisco. Credit: Ohio Stock Photography


Changing Economies

Small and midsize legacy cities are not all the same;

they display a diversity of experiences resulting from

their various historical conditions and trajectories. Yet

all of them are undergoing profound economic shifts,

driven by national and global forces. The kinds of work

available to city residents have changed dramatically

over time, with continuing declines in manufacturing

employment and significant growth in the health care

and service sectors. Some jobs in these sectors may

provide greater economic opportunity than factory

jobs, but the occupations showing the greatest growth

require few skills and provide low pay. Additionally, the

migration of people and jobs to surrounding suburban

areas, which began in the mid-20th century, continues,

and more and more city dwellers commute outside of

the city for employment. In many cases, these changes

have resulted in worse economic conditions for resi-

dents who remain in the city. Along with the economic

turmoil wrought by the Great Recession, suburbaniza-

tion and the loss of manufacturing jobs have had seri-

ous consequences for the economic health of people

living in small and midsize cities.

CONTINUED DECLINES IN MANUFACTURING MEET INCREASING SPECIALIZATION

Unsurprisingly, most cities saw continued move-

ment away from economies and workforces based on

manufacturing in the first 15 years of the 21st century.

In 2014, most of the smaller legacy cities had thou-

sands fewer manufacturing jobs than in 2002. Flint, for

instance, lost more than 14,000 manufacturing jobs

—a staggering 72 percent of the jobs in that sector

in 2002. Some cities saw much smaller net losses in

manufacturing. Youngstown, for example, had a net

loss of only 139 manufacturing jobs over this time

period—a 4 percent net loss in that sector. But all cit-

ies saw declines in the percentage of local residents

employed in manufacturing between 2000 and 2014, in

most cases by at least 20 percent.

The kinds of work available to city

residents have changed dramatically

over time, with continuing declines

in manufacturing employment and

significant growth in the health care

and service sectors.

Worn-out infrastructure, troubled finances, and human errors

in Flint have revealed a dramatic form of urban decline and

demonstrated how the most vulnerable populations bear the

brunt of dysfunction in smaller legacy cities. Credit: Mark

Scheuern/Alamy Stock Photo


As shown in Figure 4, manufacturing jobs still make

up about 10 percent of employment opportunities in

these cities on average, though the percentage varies

substantially among cities and by region. These jobs

make up about 12 percent of work possibilities in

midwestern cities and only about 6 percent of those in

the Northeast. In Albany, there is almost no manufac-

turing, while in Gary and Pontiac, manufacturing jobs

still represent about one in five opportunities for work

in the city. Despite declining opportunities for manu-

facturing work within smaller legacy cities, 13 percent

of city residents still hold jobs in this sector (Figure 5).

Beyond significant losses, manufacturing jobs in these

cities today differ in many ways from the heyday of

manufacturing in the mid-20th century. Instead of

large factories using unskilled labor to produce

consumer goods, today’s manufacturing companies

are likely to be small plants that require advanced

skills. In Allentown, for example, where manufacturing

makes up just 6 percent of jobs, the average compa-

ny has between 20 and 50 employees, most of whom

require some skills training. Although the industry is

diverse, most manufacturers in Allentown see their

niche as boutique, non-commodity manufacturing,

producing products such as fabric panels and pulver-

izing equipment. These are often good, high-paying

jobs, and local economic development officials value

their potential for building the city’s export economy

and local property tax base. Still, in only a few cases

can manufacturing provide the large-scale employ-

ment that it did in the past.

As manufacturing opportunities decline, some cities

have experienced growth in other industries that

require a relatively low-skilled workforce (see Figure 6,

p. 20). The share of residents employed in the enter-

tainment, accommodation, and food-service indus-

tries grew by around 25 percent on average across

smaller legacy cities. In most of the cities, the share

of service-industry jobs also grew. Some cities took

advantage of their proximity to larger markets to cre-

ate new economic engines. After the Bethlehem Steel

plant in Pennsylvania closed, a number of shipping

Benefiting from “place

luck,” Bethlehem remained

resilient after the closure

of Bethlehem Steel in

1999, in part because of its

proximity to Philadelphia

and New York City. Credit:

Ryan Hulvat


Figure 4

Average Sector Distribution of Jobs in Smaller Legacy Cities, 2014

Figure 5

Average Sector Distribution of Jobs Employing Residents of Smaller Legacy Cities, 2014

9%8%

12%

37%8%

4%

7%

15%Other including warehousing and construction

Public administration

Finance and real estate

Arts, recreation, and food service Education, health care

and social assistance

Professional services

Retail trade

Manufacturing

Education, health care and social assistance

Professional services

Retail trade

ManufacturingOther including warehousing and construction

Public administration

Finance and real estate

Arts, recreation, and food service

28%

13%17%

4%

5%

12%

12%

9%


and logistics businesses moved into the site because

of its access to good transportation to the hot markets

of New York and Philadelphia. Since then, local eco-

nomic development officials have begun making plans

for an inland port that could receive international

shipments and prepare them for distribution along the

East Coast. In other small and midsize legacy cities

positioned outside of larger cities, including Camden

and Gary, a sizable portion of local residents now work

in transportation and warehousing. While many of

these jobs are relatively low-paying, they represent

a growth area for cities searching for new industries

that require lower skill levels to fill the gap left by the

decline of manufacturing.

In many cities, the percentage of residents working in

professional, management, and administrative jobs

has also risen. For residents of smaller legacy cities,

these fields provided the greatest increase in job

opportunities after the health care/education and

retail sectors. On average, these cities also saw gains

in the percentage of white-collar jobs held both by

residents and by people living outside the city. But the

experiences of individual cities differed, with some

places seeing losses in the percentage of their work-

force in these white-collar jobs, and others, including

weaker cities like Pontiac, seeing large gains—even

though the percentage of residents working in this

field declined.

Figure 6

Average Changes in Share of Resident Workforce Jobs in Select Industries, 2000 to 2014

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has

projected that the combined health

care and social-assistance industry will

become the largest employment sector

nationwide by 2024.

Retail Trade

Arts, Recreation, and Food Service

Education, health care, and social assistance

Manufacturing

Professional Services

0%

8%

15%

23%

30%

2000 2014


Figure 7

Changes in Number of Health Care Jobs by Skill Level, 2000 to 2014

Jobs in health care are not all directly related to the medical profession; they may include administrative or managerial functions. This chart tracks only jobs related directly to med-icine, including doctors, nurses, health care technicians, and home health aides.

SUBSTANTIAL GROWTH IN HEALTH CARE

The most important employment trend in small and

midsize legacy cities over the last 15 years has been

the massive growth of health care and education.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that the

combined health care and social-assistance industry

will become the largest employment sector nation-

wide by 2024 (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2015). This

sector has already become dominant in most small

and midsize legacy cities, in terms both of jobs in the

cities and of city residents’ employment. Health care

and social assistance make up the largest source of

jobs in all but two cities: Albany, where government

functions eclipse them, and Gary, where manufac-

turing jobs remain dominant. The sector accounts for

one in every five jobs in nearly every city in the study

and, in a few cases, as many as one in every three. If

jobs in the education sector are included, the power of

these industries is even greater. In some cities, health

care, education, and social services account for nearly

half of the jobs located in the city held either by city

residents or by commuters from surrounding areas.

The impact of these industries is even greater through

their multiplier effects on local retail and service-

industry jobs.

The share of local employment opportunities in health

care and social services grew steadily between the

early 2000s and 2014 in nearly every city. Only two

cities—Gary and Youngstown—saw slight decreas-

es in the percentage of jobs in those industries. On

average, the share of these jobs grew by about 5

points. But in some cities, the percentage grew even

more—topping 10 percent in Pontiac and nearly that

much in Dayton. Yet in nearly all cities where health

care jobs increased, these new jobs were filled mostly

by workers living outside of the city. Dayton is a par-

ticularly striking example: while the city added 3,316

new health care and social-assistance jobs between

2002 and 2014, the number of city residents working in

those industries decreased by 965. The sector grew by

more than 12,000 jobs throughout the Dayton region,

but few city residents were able to take advantage of

this opportunity.

Every city in the study saw gains in the percentage

of city residents working inside or outside of the city

in health care or education, even if the numbers of

residents with those jobs declined. Unfortunately, in

most cases the increase in health care jobs, which

typically require more training than low-skilled man-

ufacturing or retail work, has not led to a correspond-

ing rise in local incomes. When growth in health care

employment is broken down by medical occupation, it

becomes clear that gains in low-skilled jobs, such as

home health aides and nurses’ assistants, exceeded

gains in higher-skilled positions such as doctors or

health technicians (see Figure 7). These lower-skilled

jobs correlate with low wages and “on call” arrange-

ments without regular schedules, just as in the retail

sector. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that

the mean annual wage for a home health aide was just

$22,870 in 2015 (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2015), low-

er than the federal poverty guidelines for a family of

four that year (U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services 2015).

High-skilledhealth care jobs

Low-skilledhealth care jobs

5,330

7,347


In some cases, the jobs that used to make

legacy-city downtowns and industrial

parks the economic centers of their region

have simply moved to the suburbs.

CHANGING ROLES IN REGIONAL ECONOMIES

Perhaps the most striking economic trend in small

and midsize cities over the last 15 years is the net

decline in the number of jobs located within city

limits. Nearly all cities in the study lost thousands of

jobs, representing anywhere between 2 and nearly 40

percent of employment opportunities. Only Albany and

Bethlehem saw an increase in the number of jobs in

town. For the other 22 cities, the last 15 years meant

a significant contraction in local employment. On

average, they lost about 17 percent of jobs within their

boundaries. Dayton—the city with the greatest drop

in job numbers—went from nearly 110,000 in 2002 to

just under 86,000 in 2014. Flint which had the greatest

percentage decline, went from 62,700 jobs in 2002 to

39,200 in 2014—a loss of 37.5 percent.

In some cases, the jobs that used to make legacy-city

downtowns and industrial parks the economic centers

of their region have simply moved to the suburbs.

In about half of the cities that lost local jobs, the cor-

responding metropolitan area saw jobs grow over the

same time frame (see Figure 8). Cities in the metro-

politan areas of stronger large cities, such as Gary and

Camden, had particularly sharp contrasts between

job losses at the city level and gains in the region. Yet

ten cities also saw the numbers of jobs in their region

Figure 8

Change (%) in Jobs, 2002 to 2014, in Cities and Metropolitan Areas

Flin

t

Ham

ilton

(Cin

cinn

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Pon

tiac

(Det

roit

)

Kal

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Mun

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York

Day

ton

Youn

gsto

wn

Sou

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end

Gar

y (C

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Scr

anto

n

Syr

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Akr

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a

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(Phi

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Bin

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Alle

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Lanc

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r

Gra

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apid

s

Alb

any

Bet

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em (A

llent

own)

Metro % Change

% Changein Jobs

City % Change

-40%

-30%

-20%

-10%

0%

10%

20%

Parentheses indicate the primary city in the metropolitan area if the case-study city is not the largest one in that area.


The percentage of the American population living

in poverty grew from about 12 percent in 2000 to

16 percent in 2015, about a 25 percent increase.

Meanwhile, the rate in smaller legacy cities grew

from 21 to 30 percent—a 43 percent increase. In

nine cities in the Midwest, the poverty rate grew by

more than 50 percent; in only four cities was the rate

lower than the national average. All of the smaller

legacy cities saw real losses in household income over

this period, averaging out at slightly less than 20 per-

cent. In some the decline in median household income

reached as high as 35 percent. In Flint, for example,

median household income dropped from $38,560 in

2000 to $24,860 in 2015 when adjusted for inflation.

As with poverty rates, most of the cities’ rates of

decline in household income outpaced that of the

nation as a whole. Only three relatively strong north-

eastern cities bucked this trend.

Figure 9

Changing Geography of Jobs, 2002 to 2014decline. In some cases, as in Syracuse and Dayton,

the number of lost city jobs was about the same as

the number of jobs lost in the whole area, meaning

that employment in the surrounding suburban areas

remained stable. But in Youngstown, Flint, and Bing-

hamton, the number of lost metro-level jobs exceeded

those lost in the city, so opportunities are eroding in

these cities’ suburban areas as well.

As the geography of jobs has changed, the location

of city residents’ workplaces has also shifted (see

Figure 9). In 2002, more than a third of city residents,

on average, worked in the central city, but by 2014 that

average dropped to less than 30 percent. In no city did

more than half of employed residents work there. In

most cases, the ongoing shift of resident workers to

suburban jobs has been met by a growing portion of

the city’s jobs being taken by people who live outside

of it. In 2014, 80 percent of jobs in small and midsize

legacy cities were held by people who lived in sur-

rounding areas—a shift since 2002, when the average

was 75 percent.

DECLINING ECONOMIC STATUS OF RESIDENTS

Along with the changes in job opportunities, especially

for low-skilled workers, there has been a deepening

decline in the economic status of people living in small

and midsize cities. This troubling trend is seen across

the board: all cities, even those whose population

grew, saw poverty increase and household incomes

drop between 2000 and 2015. While unemployment

rates in these cities were higher than the national

average in 2000, the gap between rates for small and

midsize legacy cities and for the country as a whole

widened over that period. Persistently high unemploy-

ment lingered for years after the official end of the

Great Recession, with the average rate at 7.7 percent in

2015—2.5 percentage points above the national level.

Similarly, the growth in poverty in small and midsize

cities has far outpaced the nationwide increase.

2002

36%

25%

29%

19%

20022014 2014

Residents Working in City

City Jobs Held byResidents


Additionally, in slightly more than half of the cities,

the labor-force participation rates declined more than

the national rate. This rate measures the percentage

of adults who are either employed or looking for a

job. Notably, the Great Recession caused a decline

in labor-force participation at the national level, as

people who were looking for work but could not find

it dropped out of the workforce entirely. A few small-

er legacy cities did see a modest rise in labor-force

participation, and, given the employment challenges

facing cities nationwide, that increase is notable. In

some cases, new residents who can more easily find

work are moving into cities from suburban areas or

even from abroad, helping to boost the rate.

Figure 10

Changes in Poverty Rates in Smaller Legacy Cities and Nationwide, 2000 to 2015

Between 2000 and 2015, Binghamton escaped the ranks of

weakest-performing smaller legacy cities. Credit: iStock.com/

DenisTangneyJr.

100%

NationalPoverty Rate

2000 2015 2000 2015

Smaller Legacy CitiesPoverty Rate

75%

50%

25%

0%

Not in Poverty

In Poverty


Figure 11

Percentage of Gain or Loss from Peak Population

Diverging TrajectoriesThe experiences of small and midsize cities,

particularly over the last 15 years, are hardly identical.

There have been a number of divergent trends associ-

ated with demographic changes, housing markets,

and workforce participation. These differences can

help us understand the factors that are helping some

cities turn around population decline, stabilize

neighborhoods, and prepare their residents for the

21st-century economy.

DIFFERING DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS IN IMMIGRANTS, OLDER ADULTS, AND YOUNG PROFESSIONALS

One clear divergence in the trajectories of small and

midsize legacy cities is between those that have stabi-

lized and regrown their population and those that

have continued to lose residents. About half of the

cities in the study continued to lose population

from 2000 to 2015, while the other half remained ap-

proximately stable or grew. For most cities, the loss or

gain was relatively modest, but a few outliers on each

side are instructive.

Five cities in the industrial Midwest lost nearly 10

percent of their population between 2000 and 2015.

These cities had already suffered heavy population

losses from their mid-20th-century peak; some had

lost nearly 50 percent of their populations (see Figure

11). These cities—particularly Flint and Youngstown—

face the greatest overall challenges and are seen,

along with Detroit, as cities in distress.

0

10%

-10%

-20%

-30%

-40%

-50%

-60%

MIIN MA NJ NY PAOH

Mun

cie

Flin

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Spr

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end

% Change in Population between 2000–2015 % Change in Population between Peak and 2000

0

10%

-10%

-20%

-30%

-40%

-50%

-60%

MIIN MA NJ NY PAOH

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% Change in Population between 2000–2015 % Change in Population between Peak and 2000


On the other end of the spectrum, a handful of cities

in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts grew by 5 percent

or more over the same time frame. The Pennsylvania

cities are concentrated in the eastern part of the

state, on the outer edges of the Northeastern Corri-

dor megaregion. An economic development expert

in Allentown—the only city in the study to surpass

its midcentury peak population by 2015—cited the

city’s proximity to New York as part of the reason for

its population regrowth. New Latino residents helped

boost Allentown’s population by over 10 percent over

the last 15 years.

Immigration is playing a significant role in small and

midsize legacy cities. Some cities in the Northeast,

including Allentown, have greater concentrations of

immigrants than the country as a whole. In Lowell and

Worcester, more than one in every five residents was

born outside of the United States, and in five other

northeastern cities, more than 10 percent of the popu-

lation was foreign-born. Nearly all smaller legacy cities

saw their immigrant populations grow between 2000

and 2015. In some cities, particularly midwestern ones

that had very few immigrants in 2000, the percentage

of immigrants grew substantially over the study period

(see Figure 12). The number of immigrants remains

small in some of these cities, but the serious growth

seen in the first 15 years of this century shows that

immigrant groups are increasingly choosing to make

their homes in these cities. Some cities have explicitly

embraced immigration to regrow their populations.

Perhaps the highest-profile effort is in Dayton, which

has marketed itself as an “immigrant-friendly city”

and provides resources to immigrants who move there.

Although the foreign-born share of the population in

Dayton remains at just 4.4 percent, it had one of the

highest immigrant growth rates from 2000 to 2015.

Beyond rising immigrant populations, small and

midsize legacy cities reflect a number of demographic

trends that are occurring nationwide, notably the in-

crease in residents aged 60 and older. The U.S. Census

Bureau estimates that the number of adults over 65 in

the United States will nearly double from 2012 to 2050

(Ortman, Velkoff, and Hogan 2014). Yet the trend in

smaller cities varies. Two-thirds of those in the study

experienced growth in the percentage of residents

over 60. The highest increases were in three struggling

cities in the Midwest: Gary, Pontiac, and Flint (see

Figure 13). Their rates were close to the national rate

of growth, about 4 percent between 2000 and 2015.

Between 2000 and 2015 Syracuse, shown

here during the city’s annual Polish Festival,

welcomed the second highest number

of immigrants among the cities studied.

Credit: Vespasian/Alamy Stock Photo

Immigration is playing a significant role

in small and midsize legacy cities. Some

cities in the Northeast, including

Allentown, have greater concentrations

of immigrants than the country as a whole.


The median age of residents in most small and mid-

size legacy cities remained below the 2015 national

average of 37.6 years, but in about half of the cities in

the study, the median age of residents rose between

2000 and 2015. This change is reflective of the United

States as a whole, where the median age increased by

2.3 years over that period. In five smaller cities in the

Midwest, the median age rose faster than in the nation

as a whole. The greatest rise occurred in Gary, whose

median age rose by 4.3 years, nearly double the na-

tional increase. Gary and Youngstown are the only two

cities in the study with a higher median age than the

national average. In Youngstown the median age for

residents was nearly 40, a troubling sign for the city’s

workforce. Along with cities in eastern Pennsylvania

and New York’s Southern Tier, Gary and Youngstown

have the largest shares of older adults. In all of these

cities, more than one in five residents is over 60, align-

ing closely with the national population.

Still, even as the share of older residents is increasing,

most small and midsize cities have younger popula-

tions on average than the country as a whole. In about

a third of the cities in the study, the median age of

Figure 12

Cities with the Greatest Growth in Immigrant Populations, 2000 to 2015

Figure 13

Cities with Greater Than Average Growth in the Older Adult Population

City % of Population in 2000

% of Population in 2015

% of Growth in Older Adult Population

Flint 14% 18% 4%

Gary 17% 22% 5%

Pontiac 11% 16% 5%

United States 16% 20% 4%

City % of Population in 2000

% of Population in 2015

% Growth of Immigrant Population

Numeric Growth of Immigrant Population

Scranton 3% 9% 196% 4,621

Dayton 2% 4% 126% 2,980

Youngstown 2% 4% 89% 818

Allentown 10% 16% 67% 8,856

Syracuse 8% 12% 56% 5,993


residents dropped between 2000 and 2015 (see Figure

14). The cities with decreasing median ages are not all

located in a single area, although those closest to New

York City, including Scranton, Allentown, and Beth-

lehem, saw three of the largest drops in median age

over the 15 years. In fact, every city in Pennsylvania

saw a decline in the share of their populations over 60,

even if that population remains relatively large. Other

cities that experienced declines in median age, such

as Muncie, Syracuse, and Kalamazoo, have good-sized

college or university campuses. Muncie, home of Ball

State University, has worked particularly diligently to

attract and retain younger residents through strategic

marketing campaigns and millennial-centric events.

Muncie’s median age of 28 is one of the lowest of the

study cities.

Reflecting another national trend, the rates of col-

lege-degree attainment rose in nearly all small and

midsize cities. The rate of residents holding at least

a bachelor’s degree rose by 10 percent in most cities

after 2000, with outliers like Camden seeing growth

as high as 50 percent. In many cases, these high

rates were due to very low college-degree attainment

in 2000. In Camden, for example, only 5 percent of

residents held a bachelor’s or higher degree in 2000.

While the rise to 8 percent represents strong growth,

it still means far too little progress has been made in

overall educational attainment. The national rate of

college-degree attainment was nearly 30 percent in

2015, and only a handful of cities reached or exceeded

that level. Grand Rapids and Worcester were the only

two cities in the study that had higher levels of degree

attainment and higher percentage-point growth than

the national rate from 2000 to 2015. In Worcester, part

of this boost may be explained by the presence of a

major medical school, which brings a new population

of students with college degrees every year.

Related to the percentage of the population with a

college degree is the share of young professionals,

people aged 25 to 34 who hold at least a bachelor’s de-

gree. In many cities, this demographic is highly sought

after for their workforce contributions and spending

power. Yet for all of the focus on this group by local

policy makers and economic development officials,

young professionals make up only about 4.5 percent

of the U.S. population. In truly booming cities like San

Francisco or Washington, DC, however, they make up

as much as 15 percent of the population. The young

professional populations in the small and midsize

legacy cities in this study vary, but no city approaches

Figure 14

Cities with Declining or Stable Percentages of Older Adults

City 2000 2015 Change

Allentown 19% 16% -2%

Bethlehem 21% 21% 0%

Lancaster 14% 13% -1%

Lima 16% 16% 0%

Scranton 24% 22% -2%

South Bend 18% 18% 0%

Worcester 18% 18% 0%

York 14% 14% 0%

Allentown is the only place in the study that had surpassed its

midcentury peak population by 2015, thanks in part to nearby

New York City. Credit: Allie_ Caulfield/flickr


the percentages found in Washington, San Francis-

co, or Boston. On average, about 3.7 percent of small

and midsize legacy cities’ populations are made up of

young professionals, but the rates range from about 8

percent in Albany—approximately the same share as

New York City—down to slightly over 1 percent in Gary

and Flint, approximately the same share as in Detroit.

On average, small and midsize legacy cities had small-

er young professional populations than larger legacy

cities in the same states. In Pennsylvania, for instance,

all smaller legacy cities had young professional pop-

ulations under 6 percent, far below Pittsburgh’s 10

percent share.

Within the small and midsize legacy cities in this

study, the trajectory of the young professional popu-

lation has varied over time. Five cities saw declines in

the share of young professionals. A handful of other

cities saw growth in that group relative to its size

in 2000, but the growth was less than the national

average, which came to slightly over 15 percent. In

most of the study cities, however, the young profes-

sional population grew more than that cohort nation-

wide (see Figure 15). This could indicate that young

college-educated people are moving into these cities,

though the numbers are relatively small.

VARYING HOUSING-MARKET CONDITIONS

Even today, years after the end of the Great Recession

and the foreclosure crisis, many small and midsize

cities are still experiencing troubled housing mar-

kets. Nearly all cities saw substantial increases in the

number of housing units in the U.S. Census Bureau’s

“other vacancy” category, which counts units that are

unoccupied but not on the market, or occupied only

seasonally, meaning they are likely abandoned. While

the average “other vacancy” rate in small and midsize

cities was about 6 percent, this rate varied significant-

ly between cities in the study (see Figure 16, p. 30). In

2015, the American Community Survey estimated that

less than 1 percent of housing units in Lowell fell into

Figure 15

Cities with Greater Than National Growth in Percentage of Young Professionals

CityGrowth in %

of Young Professionals

Young Professionals

as % of 2015

Population

Lancaster 89% 4.7%

Camden 67% 1.3%

Grand Rapids 53% 7.3%

Scranton 46% 3.5%

Bethlehem 41% 5.7%

Worcester 40% 5.9%

Binghamton 32% 4.5%

South Bend 32% 4.6%

Lowell 29% 5.0%

Dayton 26% 3.0%

Syracuse 24% 5.7%

York 22% 2.6%

Albany 19% 8.0%

Muncie 19% 3.5%

Springfield 17% 2.6%

National 16% 4.5%

Even today, years after the end of the Great

Recession and the foreclosure crisis, many

small and midsize cities are still

experiencing troubled housing markets.


this category, while more than 10 percent of homes

in Gary, Flint, Dayton, and Youngstown sat vacant and

probably abandoned. Lowell was one of only four of

the cities in which vacancy rates actually declined

from 2000 to 2015; in most cities, the percentage of

housing units that were vacant skyrocketed. Given the

nationwide mortgage foreclosure crisis, an increase

in housing vacancy was not surprising, but the extent

and breadth of vacancy and abandonment in some

small and midsize legacy cities is truly staggering.

Changes in real housing values diverged among the

cities in the study. In slightly over half of them, median

home values declined from 2000 to 2015. These cities

bucked the national trend, in which home values

rose on average by about 8 percent over that period,

reflecting a sharp increase prior to 2006, followed by a

significant drop and slow recovery. Median home val-

ues in five cities—all in Ohio and Michigan—dropped

more than 20 percent. But in a handful of northeastern

cities, values rose, in some cases by as much as 20

to 30 percent. Rental costs, on the other hand, rose

in nearly all of the cities over the 15 years studied. In

some cities, rental costs grew substantially after 2000.

This reflects a national growth trend as more consum-

ers have chosen to rent or have been precluded

from purchasing a home. A few cities situated near

larger East Coast markets saw much greater growth

than the national average, with rents increasing by

more than 20 percent after adjusting for inflation.

In these cities, especially, it may prove difficult to

keep rents affordable for lower-income residents as

housing markets improve.

Figure 16

Relationship Between Median Sales Price and Housing Vacancy in 2014

0 3% 6% 9% 12% 15%

$50

$100

$150

$200

Median Sales Price(thousands)

% Vacant Housing Units

In the wake of the foreclosure crisis,

investors have stepped in to purchase

many of the properties left behind.

These investors range in scale from small

“mom and pop” operations to large out-

of-state investment groups, and they vary

widely in their commitment to responsibly

maintaining the properties and contribut-

ing to overall neighborhood stability.


Smaller legacy cities also varied in the balance be-

tween home building and demolition over the first 15

years of the 21st century. The divergence in the net

gain or loss of housing units represents important

differences in these cities’ trajectories, particularly

concerning housing markets and land use. Cities that

are demolishing more homes than are being built are

working to combat the continued fallout of decades

of population loss and, more recently, widespread

foreclosures. Some of these cities are intentionally

working to “right-size,” or match their housing supply

to their depleted population. In these shrinking cities,

building new market-rate housing is incredibly chal-

lenging because existing home values are so low, mak-

ing it impossible to sell or rent new units at rates that

cover construction costs without additional subsidies.

On the other hand, cities that are building more than

they are demolishing have a larger stock of options

for new housing. While some of these units may be

subsidized and therefore not targeted at market-rate

occupants, a broader range of housing choices may

help these cities’ chances of success by making them

more attractive to new and current residents.

A key element in understanding the true strength of

housing markets in small and midsize legacy cities is

the portion of homes sold to individual home buyers

rather than investors. In the wake of the foreclosure

crisis, investors have stepped in to purchase many of

the properties left behind. These investors range in

scale from small “mom and pop” operations to large

out-of-state investment groups, and they vary widely

in their commitment to responsibly maintaining the

properties and contributing to overall neighborhood

stability. Cities with a large percentage of home sales

to investors—particularly out-of-town ones—are

more likely to be troubled with abandonment and code

violations, because renters and absentee landlords are

less likely than owner-occupants to keep their prop-

erties in good shape. Cities in which a large portion of

homes are purchased using a mortgage—indicating

buyers who are likely to be owner-occupants—are

more likely to have stable neighborhoods that resi-

dents want to invest in.

In York—despite its wealth of sturdy, handsome historic archi-

tecture—the housing market still shows signs of stress with low

rates of mortgage use in home purchases. Credit: Christian Hinkle/

Alamy Stock Photo


Figure 17

Relationship Between Sales Completed with a Mortgage and Median Sales Price in 2014

In 2014, slightly less than a third of the cities in the

study had a truly healthy ratio (half or more) of mort-

gages to home sales (PolicyMap). Most of these

cities are in the Northeast, but two Indiana cities,

Muncie and South Bend, also had healthy mortgage

ratios. The median sales prices in these cities in 2014

varied quite a bit, ranging from $74,600 in South

Bend (perhaps because of other issues in its housing

market) to $199,000 in Lowell (see Figure 17). Long-

term vacancy rates also varied among these cities,

with some, like Lowell, seeing only a negligible amount

while others, like Muncie, having vacancy rates as high

as 7 percent.

On the other end of the spectrum, in about half of

the cities mortgages were used at worryingly, even

alarmingly, low rates: less than a third of homes

sold in these cities in 2014 were purchased with

a mortgage, meaning two-thirds or more were bought

with cash, probably by investors. In Flint, Pontiac,

Gary, Youngstown, Camden, and York, fewer than

one in five homes were purchased with a mortgage

that year. In Flint, the most extreme case, only 8

percent used a mortgage. The breadth and depth of

the challenges for these cities’ housing markets is

difficult to overstate; their weaknesses are apparent

across a number of indicators. Among the cities with

the fewest mortgage purchases, one out of every ten

homes on average is estimated to be vacant and aban-

doned. Median sales prices are abysmally low, with

only Camden and York cracking $30,000 in 2015. These

poor housing-market conditions are a large obstacle

to true long-term recovery of these cities.

Median Sales Price(thousands)

% of Sales Completed with a Mortgage

10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

$50

$100

$150

$200


CHAPTER 3

Parsing the Trends

To get a sense of which cities were stronger across

indicators, the authors compared trends over the last

15 years with current conditions in each city. Using this

information, the cities were grouped, simply to identify

factors that may be impacting their ability to revitalize (see

Figure 18, p. 34). Additionally, identifying high-performing

cities may help pinpoint strategies that can be replicated

in struggling cities. The methods for creating these group-

ings are explained in the Appendix.

Worcester benefits from commuter rail

access and proximity to Boston. Credit:

iStock.com/SeanPavonePhoto


GOPC found that, for the most part, higher-performing

cities were strong across economic, demographic,

and housing measures. For example, Lowell had the

highest median household income, the lowest rate

of long-term housing vacancy, and the largest share

of foreign-born residents in 2015, with significant

strength in all three categories. Lower-performing

cities, on the other hand, did poorly on a number of in-

dicators. Flint had the highest unemployment rate, the

lowest median home values, and the second-smallest

share of residents with a college degree in 2015. Of

course, many of these factors are interdependent;

professionals and immigrants are less likely to move

to cities with few jobs and troubled housing markets.

Yet the general lack of overlap between high- and

low-performing cities demonstrates how much a city’s

existing problems or assets can compound its decline

or success over time.

Figure 18

City Groupings

High-Performing

Albany Lancaster

Allentown Lowell

Bethlehem Scranton

Grand Rapids Worcester

Medium-Performing

Akron Muncie

Binghamton South Bend

Hamilton Springfield

Kalamazoo Syracuse

Low-Performing

Camden Lima

Dayton Pontiac

Flint York

Gary Youngstown

With a median age of 28, among the lowest in the study, Muncie

has worked diligently to attract and retain younger residents

through strategic marketing campaigns and millennial-centric

events. Credit: Intersection


Figure 19

Point-in-Time Condition Rankings

City 2000 2009 2015

Akron 5 8 13

Albany 9 4 5

Allentown 10 9 8

Bethlehem 6 5 4

Binghamton 18 15 16

Camden 24 24 23

Dayton 17 18 18

Flint 20 22 24

Gary 23 23 22

Grand Rapids 1 1 1

Hamilton 8 7 11

Kalamazoo 7 10 9

Lancaster 11 13 12

Lima 21 20 19

Lowell 3 3 3

Muncie 13 17 15

Pontiac 14 16 21

Scranton 15 11 7

South Bend 4 6 6

Springfield 12 12 10

Syracuse 16 14 14

Worcester 2 2 2

York 19 19 17

Youngstown 22 21 20

Indeed, if we look only at point-in-time condition rank-

ings of cities in 2000, 2009, and 2015, we see that most

of the cities rated stronger in 2015 were also strong in

2000 (see Figure 19). Similarly, cities that were faring

poorly in 2000 continued to struggle in 2015. This find-

ing aligns with research showing that a city’s economic

health is highly path dependent—that is, closely tied

to its past performance. As reported by Reese and Ye

(2011), “If cities were fortunate in the past, they will

likely remain healthy in the future regardless of any

particular policy actions. Less healthy communities

will have to work very hard to improve their fortunes.”

In a few notable cases in this study, cities diverged

from their path: Akron, Hamilton, and Pontiac fell in

relative strength from 2000 to 2015, while Scranton,

Albany, and Binghamton climbed. Yet the cities at the

bottom of the pack in 2000 remained stubbornly stuck

there: only Binghamton and Muncie climbed out of

the weakest category between 2000 and 2015. On the

other hand, in 2015 Dayton, York, Gary, and Camden

showed nearly no movement from their 2000 rank in

the weakest category.

Pontiac saw one of the report’s highest increases of residents

aged 65 or older. Credit: iStock.com/RiverNorthPhotography

5%4%

-5%

-2%

-16%

-11%

HIGH-PERFORMING

MIDDLE-PERFORMING

LOW-PERFORMING

% Change in Employed Residents

% Change in Population

0%

-4%

-8%

-12%

-16%

4%

8%

High-Performing

Middle-Performing

Low-Performing


The Great Recession appears to have compounded

some of the difficulties for the weakest cities and

accelerated the revitalization of some stronger ones,

at least in terms of population change. From 2009 to

2015, populations grew in all of the high-performing

cities with the exception of Grand Rapids. Low per-

formers, with the exception of York, saw their popu-

lations remain stagnant or continue to decline (see

Figure 20). In some of the weakest cities—Gary, Flint,

and Pontiac, in particular—population loss accelerat-

ed after the recession, with declines of over 10 percent

from 2009 to 2015.

But weak past performance does not necessarily

dictate ongoing decline. In fact, some low-performing

cities did relatively well regarding trends alone.

A handful of medium-performing cities, including

Muncie, Kalamazoo, and Syracuse, performed quite

well after the recession. Kalamazoo, in particular,

saw a number of positive trends: it was the only city

where unemployment declined significantly and

median household income grew between 2009 and

2015. Camden, one of the lowest-performing cities,

was the most notable example of positive trends in a

weak city. Although the city began from a low starting

point and still falls far behind stronger cities on

most measures, Camden saw some positive trends

between 2000 and 2015. While these changes have

not resulted in wholesale revitalization, they do point

toward important steps in strengthening the city’s

economic health.

It is not easy to isolate the causes of progress in

legacy cities. A local economic development expert

in Camden could not identify specific programs or

actions that had brought about positive gains, but

pointed out that during the state’s takeover of the city

it made significant investments in education and med-

ical campuses, which acted as important catalysts

for some local redevelopment. These actions were not

without controversy, however; many residents criti-

cized the state’s choice to invest in local institutions

instead of in antipoverty programs or neighborhood

development (Koloff 2016). The city’s proximity to Phil-

adelphia has also given it an edge; the Philadelphia

76ers basketball team moved its training facility and

corporate headquarters across the river to Camden to

take advantage of tax incentives. Whatever the causes,

Camden’s trajectory shows that improvement is possi-

ble even in very weak cities.

Figure 20

Population Change by Performance Level Before and After 2009

5%

1%

-7%

-5%

-2%

-1%

2000–2009 2009–2015

HIGH-PERFORMING

MIDDLE-PERFORMING

LOW-PERFORMING

5%

1%

-7%

-5%

-2%

-1%

2000–2009 2009–2015

HIGH-PERFORMING

MIDDLE-PERFORMING

LOW-PERFORMING



Factors Influencing Trends

Two key factors emerge in the study of cities’ perfor-

mance over the last 15 years: the rise or fall in the

number of employed residents and the region in which

the city is located. Neither factor is entirely predictive

of performance, but both growth in employment and

location in a northeastern state are closely aligned

with positive trends and a stronger condition.

The change in the number of residents employed in

2000 versus 2014 correlates closely with a city’s over-

all performance over time (see Figure 21). Even if their

populations declined, nearly all of the cities with the

greatest growth in the number of employed residents

experienced the most positive trends. Only seven

cities in the study saw growth in the number of people

employed, and all of them except Camden were in the

high-performing category. In fact, in only two high-per-

forming cities, Scranton and Grand Rapids, did the

number of employed workers drop, but in both cases

mitigating factors may explain the losses. Scranton

Figure 21

Employed Residents over Time by City’s Performance Level 2000 to 2014

had the third-highest improvement score overall,

and its labor-force participation rate held steady,

but its aging population may have resulted in a net

loss in the number of workers living in the city. Grand

Rapids—the highest-scoring city in all point-in-time

rankings— slipped in performance over time. The city

has not done well on trends alone, but its past strong

condition kept it in the high-performing category.

The strongest predictor of performance across mea-

sures, even more than employment-related factors, is

the city’s region. Cities in the Northeast consistently

fared better than their peers in the Midwest on nearly

all indicators. Even within each region, the state where

a city is located appears to be related to performance.

Notably, all the study cities in Ohio struggled, particu-

larly after the Great Recession. Even Hamilton, which

had a very positive trajectory between 2000 and

2009, slipped in the rankings from 2009 to 2015. Both

Akron and Hamilton were among the top performers

in 2000, but by 2015 they had fallen into the moderate

performance group.

5%4%

-5%

-2%

-16%

-11%

HIGH-PERFORMING

MIDDLE-PERFORMING

LOW-PERFORMING



0%

-4%

-8%

-12%

-16%

4%

8%

High-Performing

Middle-Performing

Low-Performing

5%4%

-5%

-2%

-16%

-11%

HIGH-PERFORMING

MIDDLE-PERFORMING

LOW-PERFORMING



0%

-4%

-8%

-12%

-16%

4%

8%

High-Performing

Middle-Performing

Low-Performing


Another predictor of strength was proximity to

larger cities and markets. As previously discussed,

cities near major East Coast markets have benefited

economically and demographically from their

locations. Leaders from Scranton, the cities of the

Lehigh Valley, and Camden all pointed to the economic

power of positioning themselves as support loca-

tions for New York City and Philadelphia. Worcester

and Lowell benefited from their proximity to Boston

and their connections to that city via commuter rail.

According to local leaders, 1,300 people commute

from Worcester to Boston every day, connecting the

two cities’ economies and talent pools. Researchers

Reese and Ye (2011) call this economic benefit “place

luck,” noting that smaller cities near strong markets

do see some quantifiable economic benefits. But their

analysis also found that place luck is not determina-

tive: local public policies related to crime, education,

and public services are the most important factors in

shaping cities’ economic health.

Turning around problematic conditions in small and

midsize legacy cities is certainly difficult, but some

appear to be meeting the challenge. Interviews with

local stakeholders in these cities, including commu-

nity and economic development practitioners and

local government officials, revealed a common theme:

that many of them reached a true low point or “rock

bottom” before being able to initiate a turnaround. In

Lowell, for example, local officials said that the city

was too poor in the 1950s and 1960s to undertake

urban-renewal programs, which would have torn down

parts of the old downtown and neighborhoods. Even-

tually, this situation proved to be a boon. When the

mill buildings were designated as national historical

sites in the 1970s, the city hoped to revitalize through

tourist activity centered on the 19th-century mills.

But high levels of tourist traffic never materialized,

and in the 1980s a large local employer went into

bankruptcy; at that point Lowell slid into very hard

times. In the late 1990s, however, the city decided

to take the risk of acquiring the mill buildings and

bidding out for their redevelopment as housing. Years

later, Lowell has strategically shaped its renewal

around its downtown buildings, turning millions of

square feet of old textile mills into apartments, artists’

studios, and retail space. The city was unusually lucky

to be able to preserve its historic buildings, but this

case shows that in smaller cities conditions often do

get really bad before successful revitalization efforts

can take hold, and progress comes in fits and starts

over a period of decades.

In the late 1990s, the City of

Lowell acquired the historic textile

mills on the Merrimack River and

transformed millions of square

feet of abandoned industrial space

into apartments, artists’ studios,

and commercial venues. Credit:

iStock.com/DenisTangneyJr


Proximity to major metros may help explain some of

the regional variation among smaller legacy cities, but

other factors are also involved. Many of the midwestern

cities’ economies were based around auto manu-

facturing, an industry that has been declining in the

Midwest for decades as jobs moved offshore or to

other parts of the country. But the industry didn’t hit

rock bottom until the Great Recession and the ensuing

auto bailout. In many northeastern cities, on the other

hand, the bottom dropped out decades earlier. Accord-

ing to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the econo-

mies of the two regions began to diverge substantially

in the 1980s, as the Northeast continued to move

away from manufacturing while the Midwest experi-

enced a small renaissance in that sector (Longworth

2014). Unfortunately, the midwestern turnaround

was short-lived, as manufacturing employment has

continued to decline. The longer transition away from

their traditional manufacturing economies may have

put midwestern cities at a disadvantage compared to

those in the Northeast, which had more time to focus

on attracting new kinds of jobs and retraining their

workforces to compete in the 21st-century economy.

Also, many of the midwestern cities were historically

more reliant on manufacturing than their peers on the

East Coast, meaning that their economies required a

more fundamental restructuring.

In some sense, this situation may be positive for mid-

western cities. Although many are behind in pivoting to

a postindustrial economy, they now have the opportu-

nity to learn from the successes and mistakes of their

northeastern peers. Revitalization requires some

experimentation and innovation, but small and midsize

cities in the Midwest can adapt proven strategies from

the outset instead of relying only on trial and error.

The best practices and strategies for action outlined in

the following chapter can help arm these cities with a

broad set of tools for long-term revitalization.

The farmers market,

shops, and Luna Theater

draw crowds to Lowell’s

once-abandoned Mill No. 5.

Credit: Joel Laino

Revitalization requires some

experimentation and innovation, but small

and midsize cities in the Midwest can

adapt proven strategies from the outset

instead of relying only on trial and error.


CHAPTER 4

Promising Strategies for Success in Legacy Cities

Cities are always changing; their residents, their physical

appearance, and the ways in which they function shift

slightly every day. Yet more apparent changes are often

met with resistance. In legacy cities whose economic and

cultural power has declined, some of this resistance is

understandable. Acknowledging and adapting to a seem-

ingly lesser position in the world can feel like accepting

defeat. Yet to regain their strength, these cities must plan

for ongoing change, including economic transition and

population loss.

As part of New York State’s Tech Valley,

Albany has collaborated with Troy and

Schenectady to promote the region’s

strong technology companies, vibrant

neighborhoods, and low cost of living.

Credit: iStock.com/kickstand


With easy access to Chicago via airport, highway, and the South

Shore train, Gary can benefit from local industries looking to move

products into the bigger city market. Credit: Jerry Huddleston/flickr

To reverse decline, every small or midsize legacy city

must assess its current situation, taking into account

not just data and facts but also residents’ percep-

tions, both positive and negative, about how the city

is faring. By starting with a realistic picture, the city’s

leaders can make informed decisions about the future.

Small and midsize cities, perhaps even more than

their larger peers, must figure out how they will fit

into the changing global economy. A city must find its

own niche, devise a plan for thriving in that space, and

carry it out consistently over the long term. That niche

will depend on the city’s local assets, including its

location, economic drivers, demographics, and local

leadership. Each city must find the position in which it

is most likely to thrive, meaning that the right niche for

one city might not be right for another.

In the past, some smaller legacy cities were able to

function independently in the global market, but in the

future that is unlikely to be an option for many. For a

city in a clearly defined region, long-term success may

be tied more to aligning itself with its neighbors. The

Capital District of New York includes Albany, Troy, and

Schenectady, three small legacy cities that have main-

tained individual identities while building on synergies

among them. They have branded themselves as the

Tech Valley and are working together to promote the

region’s assets: strong technology companies, vibrant

neighborhoods, and a relatively low cost of living.

Other cities may align with larger legacy cities in their

region, as Akron and Canton have done, coordinating

with Cleveland to compete for national and global

employers. Even if the larger legacy city is not a strong

economic engine on its own, coordination among

several smaller cities can create a regional identity to

draw new businesses and residents. Indiana and New

York have embraced regional funding models to en-

courage cities to work with their surrounding regions

to compete for state economic development grants

and incentives. These relatively new state programs

could help drive smaller legacy cities to compete for

jobs and new residents alongside their neighbors

instead of against them.

If a city’s regional neighbor is a large metropolis that

is successfully competing at a global level, the smaller

city may be able to carve out an economic niche as

a “support city”—a logistics hub, staging ground, or

bedroom community—for the nearby major market.

A number of smaller legacy cities, particularly on the

East Coast, have already moved into this position.

As discussed earlier, after the closing of the Bethle-

hem Steel plant, the city of Bethlehem repositioned

itself as a shipping and logistics hub for the Philadel-

phia and New York markets. Even a city with serious

challenges, such as Gary, can take advantage of the

strength of its neighbors. Gary’s proximity to Chica-

go gives it access to major rail lines, highways, and

airports (Longworth 2014). Gary has a higher than

typical percentage of local jobs in transportation and

warehousing, demonstrating that its residents can

benefit from industries looking to move products into

the Chicago market.

For some cities, the niches mentioned above are

not feasible because of their location or economic

situation. Still, they may have a future as service and


educational hubs for a more localized region. A city

can position itself as the center of a regional “labor

shed” from which residents are willing to travel for

employment (Longworth 2014). While such a city may

not have a global profile, it can provide services for

a less densely populated region whose economy is

based on agriculture, natural resource extraction, or

manufacturing. These places are less likely to draw

new residents from outside the region but can focus

their resources on building a high quality of life for

existing residents.

Determining the future role of these legacy cities will

require a great deal of vision and some risk-taking on

the part of local leaders. Choosing to remake cities for

the 21st century means accepting that these places

will not look the way they did in the 1950s. For this

reason, changes in local leadership and generation-

al shifts can provide an opportunity to jump-start

revitalization efforts. In Kalamazoo, when 200 city

staff members accepted an early retirement package,

the median age and experience of the administration

dropped substantially. The loss of institutional knowl-

edge did create some challenges, but current city staff

members report that a new culture of creativity and

collaboration has emerged. They note that one of the

most important benefits of this new culture is that

almost no one remembers how things were done in

“the good old days.” Staff members came to their jobs

understanding that the city was in a difficult situation

and were willing to try new and innovative strategies to

confront its challenges. This attitude has allowed the

city of Kalamazoo to implement strategies that would

have been nonstarters under the previous leadership.

In Kalamazoo, when 200 city staff members accepted an early

retirement package, a new culture of creativity and collaboration

emerged. Credit: Neal Conway, Communications Manager, City of

Kalamazoo

Choosing to remake cities for the 21st

century means accepting that these

places will not look the way they did in

the 1950s. For this reason, changes in

local leadership and generational shifts

can provide an opportunity to jump-start

revitalization efforts.


However, even with acceptance of new approaches,

revitalization requires great patience. In their related

Policy Focus Report, Mallach and Brachman (2013, 49)

argue that strategic incrementalism, or “melding a

long-term strategic vision with an incremental process

for change,” is the surest path forward for legacy cit-

ies. Breaking away from their path of decline requires

sustained strategic effort. In pursuing opportunities

for revitalization, local leaders need to make sure that

they are furthering a shared community vision of the

city’s future through their strategic decision making.

This communal vision may be especially important in

smaller legacy cities, which have fewer local assets

and resources, leaving less room for high-risk changes.

The capacity to carry out this vision is one of the key

elements that separates successful smaller legacy cit-

ies from those that will continue to struggle. Although

larger legacy cities—and even growing and thriving

communities—also struggle to find sufficient resourc-

es, civic leadership in these places often remains

high in spite of population and economic decline. A

committed group of local leaders, including elected

officials, business leaders, civil servants, grassroots

advocates, philanthropic partners, and other interest-

ed parties, can chart a new direction for the city and

work together to push that vision forward. The well-

known turnaround stories of larger legacy cities like

Pittsburgh demonstrate the potential for revitalization

and even growth when there is sufficient leadership

capacity to strategically and incrementally move the

city in a new direction. Some smaller legacy cities with

unusually strong local leadership have also been able

to revitalize. Indeed, research by the Federal Reserve

Bank of Boston into “resurgent” smaller legacy cities

found that the common denominator among them was

cross-sectoral leadership actively and explicitly work-

ing to combat further decline. Local leaders guiding

revitalization in resurgent cities “recognized it was in

their own interest to prevent further deterioration in the

local economy and . . . took responsibility for bringing

about improvement” (Kodrzycki and Muñoz 2009, 2).

Research by the Federal Reserve Bank

of Boston into “resurgent” smaller

legacy cities found that the common

denominator among them was cross-

sectoral leadership actively and explicitly

working to combat further decline,

like the collaborative effort that rescued

Lowell. Credit: SuperStock / Alamy

Stock Photo


Worcester is one such resurgent city that has bene-

fited from networked leadership. When a number of

long-term community leaders retired at around the

same time, an opportunity arose for new leaders to

take the reins. Key positions, including the mayor, city

manager, and executives at major corporations, were

filled by energetic people who intentionally recruited

more talent to the city. These new leaders led Worces-

ter through a decade-long process of reimagining

the city’s downtown after the closure of a center-city

mall—a move that one stakeholder said would

have been very difficult to make under the previous

leadership. The efforts were successful because “the

right people in the right position” worked together

across sectors to reinvigorate the downtown. The shift

in leadership was not without bumps, but the city’s

positive trajectory stems from the willingness of new

leaders to capitalize on the city’s assets and seek a

new vision for Worcester’s future.

Yet many smaller cities lack the leadership capacity

to build and execute a community-wide vision. Years

of population loss, suburban flight, the loss of locally

based corporations, underperforming education sys-

tems, and other systemic challenges have created real

human capital deficits. Because talented, visionary

leaders are stretched thin in these places, with insuf-

ficient and shrinking resources, many of them may

focus more on stemming the losses than on rehabilita-

tion or renewal. Addressing this challenge is critical to

changing the trajectory of these cities.

Smaller legacy cities that do show signs of turnaround

have focused on strategies that build local capacity

or prioritize revitalization efforts using limited re-

sources. The promising strategies discussed here

were uncovered during interviews with stakeholders

in most of the cities in the study, though the authors

were unable to reach anyone in Gary or Pontiac. Inter-

views were aimed at identifying factors that contrib-

uted to the success of these cities but that were not

apparent in the data. From those conversations, the

authors identified eight broad strategies that have

been deployed by smaller legacy cities to further the

process of revitalization. Each strategy is built around

the city’s existing assets and realistically acknowledg-

es limitations. In keeping with the focus on incremen-

talism, none of these strategies should be considered

a “silver bullet”; no single strategy turned around any

of these seriously challenged cities.

In the 1990s, the redevelopment

of Armory Square helped

revitalize commerce in downtown

Syracuse. Credit: Philip Scalia/

Alamy Stock Photo


Artspace in Hamilton adapted a historic downtown building into a mixed-use arts facility, with affordable live/work units for artists and

ground-floor commercial space. Credit: Hamilton-Artspace Hamilton Lofts (OHPTC)

Strategy 1: Build Civic Capacity and Talent

Committed local leadership is critical for shepherding

small and midsize legacy cities through the difficult

process of revitalization. As discussed above, cities

need stakeholders from a variety of sectors to set

out and execute a shared vision of the city’s future. In

smaller cities, especially, each individual in a leader-

ship role can have an outsized impact, either positively

or negatively, on the city’s trajectory. Thus, having the

right person in the right position is critically important.

The attitudes of people in stewardship roles also have

an impact. Those guiding the city forward need to

be realistic about its current condition and must be

willing to upend old ways that haven’t been successful

in the past.

Building local civic capacity is no small task,

particularly in a smaller legacy city whose population

and economy are shrinking. Attracting and retain-

ing the next generation of leaders requires creative

approaches that may diverge from standard recruit-

ment practices. Smaller legacy cities need to focus on

retaining local talent while drawing new leaders from

elsewhere. While there is no single guaranteed way to

build civic capacity, those leading the effort should

try to find the right people to fill certain critical roles

today while working on building a talent pool for the

future. The roles that require special care will vary

from city to city, but might include the city manager,

the director of a public or nonprofit economic develop-

ment entity, and the head of a large anchor institution.

The people who have influence in filling these jobs

vary (sometimes they may be the voters), but their

willingness to look beyond the “usual suspects” and


pick innovative, dedicated candidates will be important

in determining the city’s long-term trajectory. In many

cities, leadership opportunities are too often limited

to people with the right personal ties and loyalties,

thus excluding a diverse set of potential change

makers. Cities are often unwilling to look beyond their

boundaries to pull in the right person for a job, but

intentionally recruiting leaders from outside can make

a clear difference.

Hamilton demonstrates how thoughtful recruitment

of outside leaders can help jump-start revitalization.

For years, leaders there treated the city as if it were

a walled garden, allowing few external influences to

catalyze creativity. Within the city government, depart-

ments functioned in silos with little collaboration. As

major employers left the city and the recession took

hold, leaders on the city council began to recognize

that an infusion of outside energy could help get

them back on track. They intentionally recruited a city

manager from outside the community in the hope that

it would introduce a fresh perspective. The change

seems to be making a difference. The new city manag-

er has worked on building a culture of collaboration:

breaking down departmental silos within the govern-

ment, between the private and public sectors, and

among regional governments and entities. While it was

the new manager who catalyzed the shift in attitudes,

the city council’s willingness to tear down the garden

wall was a critical first step.

In addition to finding the right leaders for the current

moment, cities need to ensure that the next genera-

tion is being groomed to step into place. While the new

“generation” is not limited to younger people, all cities

should cultivate a pool of talented younger individuals

who can fill leadership roles as they arise. A healthy

population of young professionals is one indicator that

cities are replenishing their pool of civic leadership.

Fortunately, most of the cities in the study experi-

enced greater growth in the young professional popu-

lation than the nation as a whole did, but many still lag

behind larger, more economically vibrant markets in

attracting this demographic.

Cities struggling to attract or retain young profession-

als should consider ways to draw this demographic at

critical points in their career development. Small cities

have an important underappreciated asset in that

their size allows ambitious younger people to mingle

with decision makers or to become decision makers

themselves earlier in their careers than they would

in a larger, more competitive job market. Some cities,

including Hamilton, have created specific programs to

place talented and passionate young people in leader-

ship-track positions in city government and the private

sector, allowing recent graduates to bring new energy

and creativity into local government or businesses

while they gain important professional experience.

These programs may draw from local universities or

may cast a wider net to find candidates interested in

a new adventure or in the issues facing the particular

city. In Hamilton, the Russell P. Price Fellowship gives

talented recent graduates the opportunity to take on

management-level projects within the city govern-

ment. Fellows are provided with housing in a down-

town loft and are encouraged to become a part of the

fabric of the community. In the first few years of the

project, many of the fellows have remained in Hamil-

ton after their term ends, adding to a new generation

of local leaders.

Having the right people available and trained for

high-impact jobs is a critical issue for smaller legacy

cities. While building the right mix of local leaders

is a long-term process that will require each city to

create an individualized plan for cultivating leadership,

recruiting outsiders for key positions and developing

fellowship programs to attract younger leaders can

be helpful.


South Bend built on one of its greatest assets—its proximity to Notre Dame University—through a fellowship program that aligns the talents of recent STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) graduates with the needs of local businesses, nonprofits, and municipal government. Fellows in the program, called enFocus, form a team of consultants who act as a “really smart SWAT team” to help solve challenges facing local organizations. In addition to the important professional experience gained through working on projects, each fellow is paired with a community-leader mentor and gains management experience by supervising a team of interns that works with the fellows on consulting contracts.

These internships connect students to South Bend while they are in school, giving enFocus another route to retain talent in the city. South Bend hopes to entice enFocus graduates to stay in the city as entrepreneurs, and so far more than 80 percent of graduates have remained in Indiana. Although the program is still relatively new, early results demonstrate the value of engaging local students and graduates as a means of attracting talent for the long term while also benefiting local organizations in the near term.

Students gather at the John Cushing Hall of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, one of South Bend’s greatest assets. Credit: dmac/

Alamy Stock Photo

STRATEGY IN ACTION: SOUTH BEND’S “REALLY SMART SWAT TEAM”


Strategy 2: Encourage a Shared Public- and Private-Sector Vision

The magnitude of the challenges facing smaller legacy

cities means that local government leaders cannot

successfully address them alone. Stronger legacy

cities have a committed cadre of local leaders from

the private sector who contribute their expertise and

resources to revitalization. In the most successful

places, these private-sector leaders collaborate with

city administrators and elected officials to create and

carry out a shared vision for the city. Revitalization

requires leaders from all sectors to “own the problem”

and figure out how to fix it.

In some cities, private-sector leaders have formed

groups to address the challenges. Perhaps the best-

known example of shared public/private vision comes

from Grand Rapids, where business leaders created

an organization to revitalize the central business

district. The initial group, known as Grand Vision,

included representatives of the business, government,

and academic communities and used data to create a

new vision and plan for the struggling downtown (The

Philanthropic Collaborative 2009). After the plan was

drafted, the group changed its name to Grand Action

and set about realizing that vision. The plan called for

a new downtown arena and convention center, which

required the cooperation of public- and private-sector

stakeholders. Perhaps in part because of the collabo-

rative interventions of these committed leaders, Grand

Rapids remains the strongest smaller legacy city in

the Midwest and the only one to reach the top-perfor-

mance category.

Lancaster also benefited from the intervention of

committed corporate and business leaders. In the late

1990s, this group became concerned that if they did

not stem the tide of decline in the city, the suburban

areas in the county would begin to deteriorate as well.

To chart a path forward, leaders from the banking,

legal, and journalism sectors joined with the chamber

of commerce to create a 15-year economic devel-

opment plan for the city. The group called itself the

Lancaster Alliance and incorporated as a nonprofit

organization open only to private-sector members. The

development plan proposed some major investments,

including a downtown conference center, but also fo-

cused on expanding undeveloped local resources like

tourism and new businesses in different parts of the

city. The Lancaster city government used the plan as a

guiding document for its economic development work,

and today much of what was proposed in the plan has

been executed.

South Bend does not have a formal organization like

Grand Action or the Lancaster Alliance, but it benefits

from the work of an informal group of retired business

leaders who volunteer their time to help with revital-

ization efforts. According to a local official, some of

these retirees work as many as 60 hours a week. This

kind of commitment is beneficial to the city not only

through the retirees’ direct contributions, but also

through the creation of a culture of civic engagement

for business leaders. Some of them actively pass that

civic spirit on by working as mentors for fellows in the

enFocus leadership development program.

In some cities, the contribution of business leaders

is less direct. In Camden, even after the departure of

some major corporate headquarters, the impact of

private-sector leadership is still felt through continu-

ing philanthropy and strategic interventions. In 1984,

the RCA Corporation and the Campbell Soup Company

joined Camden city officials to discuss redeveloping

waterfront land downtown owned by the three enti-

ties. They determined that the most effective way to

revitalize the site would be through the creation of a

nonprofit entity designed to represent both the private

and public sectors. Now known as Cooper’s Ferry Part-

nership, the organization serves as the backbone for


Camden revitalized waterfront land downtown through a public-

private nonprofit entity called Cooper’s Ferry Development

Association. Credit: iStock.com/Aneese

a number of collaborative private- and public-sector

endeavors in economic development, arts and culture,

and preservation and creation of open space.

Philanthropic and corporate giving is often critical

in smaller legacy cities. The Kalamazoo Promise, a

guaranteed four-year college scholarship for grad-

uates of Kalamazoo public schools, is funded by a

group of anonymous donors who want to promote the

city’s economic and community development through

greater access to higher education. While this kind of

investment is unlikely to be replicated in other small

legacy cities, it demonstrates that when wealthy

residents commit to investing in their community,

the results can be powerful. Hamilton benefited

from combined public- and private-sector efforts to

revitalize its downtown through an investment fund,

as described in the Strategy in Action on page 50.

Despite significant statewide difficulties, Hamilton’s

recent successes demonstrate that collaborative

cross-sectoral leadership is crucial to dealing with

the entrenched challenges facing small and midsize

legacy cities.


STRATEGY IN ACTION: WORKING TOGETHER FOR HAMILTON, OHIO

Through the Consortium for Ongoing Reinvestment (CORE) in Hamilton, partners pool resources to provide gap financing, residential

redevelopment grants, and capital for strategic property acquisition to revitalize the city’s central business district and surrounding areas.

Credit: CORE

Hamilton is one of the strongest-performing legacy

cities in Ohio. Hamilton is gaining population, stabiliz-

ing vacancy rates, and attracting new businesses due

in part to the coordinated effort of the local public,

private, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors. Start-

ing in 2010, private-sector and philanthropic leaders

decided that the “old ways” of investing in Hamilton

were insufficient and that riskier, but potentially more

catalytic, investments would be needed for the city

to turn around. In response, the city manager’s office,

local community foundation, and two local financial

institutions established CORE—the Consortium for

Ongoing Reinvestment.

Through CORE, partners pool resources to provide

gap financing, residential redevelopment grants,

and capital for strategic property acquisition. CORE

provides strategic, patient capital for major redevelop-

ment projects in Hamilton’s central business district

and surrounding areas. A notable project was

150 High Street, a 167,000-square-foot former

department store that sat vacant in the central

business district for over five years. CORE purchased

and rehabilitated the building to create space for a

new call center, medical offices, a grocery market,

and additional office space. Beyond investments in

real estate, CORE and the individual partners are

seeding and stewarding programming to support

CORE’s investments, such as internship programs,

business development support, and Main Street pro-

gramming. Pooling resources and talents around clear

priorities and goals, creating channels of communica-

tion to ensure nimble responses, and accepting that

no single entity has the resources to revitalize Ham-

ilton alone generated new energy and commitment

among Hamilton’s residents and leaders and seems

poised to produce a financial return for the

city and investors.

Strategy 3: Expand Opportunities for Low-Income Workers

Smaller legacy cities, like their larger peers, have long

struggled with entrenched poverty. As middle-class

residents left for the suburbs, the share of low-income

city residents grew. Unfortunately, as higher-paying

manufacturing jobs left as well, the number of res-

idents who were struggling economically continued

to increase. The Great Recession compounded these

issues even further, leaving at least one in five residents

of all smaller legacy cities living in poverty in 2015.

Although poverty increased nationally over the study

period, these smaller cities still have much higher aver-

age rates than the nation as a whole.

Efforts to revitalize smaller legacy cities cannot be

successful if they focus only on higher-income res-

idents. To be truly successful, cities must include

opportunities for people of all incomes and educational

backgrounds. Even large legacy cities like Baltimore

and Philadelphia are struggling to make their

strategies for revitalization and economic growth

inclusive and to ensure that a rising tide truly does lift

all boats. A recent paper by a consortium of Federal

Reserve Banks and the Funders’ Network for Smart

Growth and Livable Communities (Lambe, Longworth,

and Stauber 2017) points out how economic growth

in smaller legacy cities does not always increase

prosperity for all residents. The authors characterize

economic growth and broad prosperity as two arcs of

development that function separately unless they are

intentionally connected. As some of their markets

begin to turn around, smaller legacy cities must be

sure to incorporate inclusive policies into their revital-

ization efforts.

This result is best achieved by building a web of

interventions to help low-income residents access

opportunities for jobs, education, skills training, and

adequate affordable housing. Along with transportation

In Gary, on the shore of Lake Michigan, manufacturing jobs at

U.S. Steel and other employers still represent about one in five

opportunities for work in the city. Credit: Purcell Pictures/Alamy

Stock Photo



needs, a key thread in this web is improving the

employment prospects of low-skilled workers. While

many cities have worked on creating local jobs,

fewer have tried to ensure that the local workforce

is equipped to fill those jobs. A number of smaller

legacy cities report a “skills gap,” a disconnect be-

tween the jobs available locally and the skill sets

of local workers looking for jobs.

To combat the skills gap and improve residents’

economic prospects, some smaller legacy cities have

invested in workforce development programs. Some

begin even before high school graduation and do more

than teach students skills in the trades or advanced

manufacturing. Instead, they work toward a cultural

shift away from the notion that having a four-year

college degree is the only way to get a job with mid-

dle-class or higher wages. Some legacy cities have a

number of well-paying, high-skilled advanced manu-

facturing or skilled labor positions that do not require

a bachelor’s degree but do require training beyond

high school.

For local employers and for the long-term health of

these communities, high school students and their

parents must understand that good jobs are available

for students with skills. In the quest to develop the

local workforce and reduce poverty, the private sector

can make important contributions. Leaders in Syra-

cuse took an innovative approach to these problems

after recognizing that the city’s poverty was a lia-

bility for both the business sector and government;

the city’s negative image and the visible poverty in

the urban core kept businesses from locating down-

town. Additionally, the long-term costs of blight and

lost tax revenues were a large burden on the city’s

finances. CenterState Corporation for Economic

Opportunity (CEO), the regional chamber of commerce

and economic development organization, saw that

working to reduce poverty would help its members—

local businesses—thrive. CenterState CEO, along

with grassroots organizations, tied a redevelopment

project near a local hospital to high-paying jobs and

skills training. Since that pilot project, the program

has expanded from construction into health care jobs

and has widened its geographic reach. This model is

of particular interest because it leveraged workforce

development programs to help combat other issues

facing the community, including blighted homes. Some

of these interventions seem to be making an impact:

while all of the study cities saw growth in poverty rates

from 2000 to 2015, Syracuse had one of the lowest

poverty growth rates of the group and a poverty growth

rate only slightly higher than the national average.

In 2015, this young woman in Lima received a job offer on the

spot during Link Lima’s Makerfest, a “reverse job fair” that allows

students from technical high schools to show off their skills for

potential employers. Credit: Link Lima


STRATEGY IN ACTION: REMAKING LIMA, OHIO’S WORKFORCE

Through events such as Link Lima’s Makerfest, Lima is building the skills of current local employees and convincing tomorrow’s workers

that there are good jobs in the city’s manufacturing industry. Credit: Link Lima

The city of Lima is an industrial center situated in an otherwise rural part of western Ohio. Lima, a city of less than 40,000 people, is still home to a military tank plant, a steel forge, and an oil refinery. Yet even with these remaining employers, the city experienced a severe decline in low-skilled manufacturing jobs resulting in high rates of joblessness and poverty. As the remaining manufacturing companies, particularly those in the petrochemical industry, evolved to require higher-skilled workers, the demand for a skilled workforce began to outstrip the supply of local people with the necessary skills. According to a local economic development official, there are 1,000 to 1,500 open jobs in Allen County where Lima is located, and many of them are high-paying, high- skilled positions. Lima-based economic development agencies and employers began to recognize that in order to fill those positions, they would need to create training programs that will equip residents, many of whom are low-income, with the right skills for available jobs.

A program called Link Lima/Allen County emerged from this recognition. Link Lima functions as an umbrella for a number of different workforce development initiatives, including training programs at technical colleges, individual employers’ skills-training workshops, and a marketing and education campaign attacking the notion that all high-paying jobs require a college degree. The program has particularly targeted high schools, which are coming to embrace that technical training could be a better launching pad for some students than college-preparatory classes. In 2015, Link Lima hosted Makerfest, a “reverse job fair” that hosted 1,100 students and 50 local employers. Employers had the opportunity to show students what they make while students from technical high schools participated in competitions showing off their skills. The welding competition was swept by three young women—one of whom received a job offer on the spot for after she finished high school. Lima is working to tackle its workforce challenges both by building the skills of the existing workforce and by convincing tomorrow’s workforce that there are good jobs in the local manufacturing industry.


Strategy 4: Build on an Authentic Sense of Place

To compete for jobs and highly skilled workers, cities

are working to create places where people will want

to live. This strategy is based on the belief that the

next generation of workers, particularly young pro-

fessionals, may have many job options and will first

choose where they want to live and then decide where

to work. Employers will be drawn to places with a high

concentration of the workers they want to hire. Addi-

tionally, in all income groups, families drawn to cities

for work are more likely to stay and integrate into the

social fabric if they find the community to be attrac-

tive, safe, and vibrant.

Creating places where people want to spend time,

known as “placemaking,” has proven to be a useful

economic development strategy in a number of cities.

In smaller legacy cities in particular, placemaking

should build on existing assets, such as historic neigh-

borhoods, a compact and walkable downtown, and

established cultural institutions. Cities should con-

sider what demographic groups would be particularly

attracted by these assets, including young residents

who have moved away but want to return home to

start a family or take care of aging parents, residents

from elsewhere in the region who are seeking an urban

setting, immigrants who need inexpensive housing,

and do-it-yourself rehabbers who cannot afford to

buy historic homes in larger cities (Fox and Axel-Lute

2008). By studying the particular needs and interests

Kalamazoo Coffee Company’s Black Owl Cafe is a downtown hub for younger residents. Credit: Neal Conway, Communications Manager,

City of Kalamazoo


of target populations, cities can build on their existing

sense of place to attract new residents.

It is important to emphasize that most small and

midsize legacy cities are unlikely to remake them-

selves into hip meccas like Portland or Austin. In fact,

attempting to do so would compromise their appeal.

A strong sense of place must be rooted in authentici-

ty; trying to re-create one of those cities in Dayton or

Akron would undermine their own authentic draw: a

sense of Rust Belt chic with a low cost of living and a

good quality of life. Creative placemaking is not limited

to cool coffee shops and bike lanes, although such

amenities do help; it is about creating cities where

people want to live, work, and play. What that looks like

in smaller legacy cities in the Midwest and Northeast

may be quite different from the atmosphere of San

Francisco, Boston, or even Pittsburgh.

Scranton, widely known for its representation of

middle America on the television show The Office,

embraced placemaking when younger residents who

had moved to New York or another large city started

returning home because of strong family and commu-

nity ties. Many of them wanted to maintain an urban

lifestyle and brought back creative ideas about city

living. Downtown redevelopment created more living

options, as well as new bars, boutiques, and coffee

shops, which have helped recast Scranton’s city center

as vibrant, hip, and creative. Still, these attractions

alone were not the greatest draw for new residents.

Meghan Ashlin Rich’s exploration of Scranton’s revi-

talization (2013) describes how local leaders, working

to attract the creative class by rebranding the city as

cool, found that strong ties among residents and a

good quality of life were just as important in bringing

former residents back. While returning residents are

interested in authenticity, they also believe that qual-

ity of life will be higher in Scranton than in a bigger

city. And they recognize that they can have a much

greater impact on the city’s future than they could

have elsewhere, and many are dedicated to guiding the

placemaking efforts.

Some smaller cities have found that local features

typically seen as liabilities may be assets in the con-

text of placemaking. In particular, remediated brown-

field sites in the urban core can present opportunities

for redevelopment. Large or contiguous parcels are

often difficult to come by in urban areas, which means

that after thorough cleanup, an old industrial site

like the former Bethlehem Steel plant may become

a valuable space for new development. Low housing

costs are a liability for cities in many ways, but they

also allow people with lower incomes or less accu-

mulated wealth to purchase and rehabilitate homes.

Dayton’s very low housing costs led to the city leading

the nation with the highest percentage of home buyers

under 35 years old in 2016 (Clark 2016). In the Dayton

market, half of the buyers are young people—more

than double the percentage in hot markets like San

Francisco. Certainly weak housing markets need to

be addressed to ensure long-term success in smaller

legacy cities, but in the meantime inexpensive houses

are an opportunity for some residents.

Cross-sectoral collaboration and intergovernmental

support are important in legacy cities’ placemaking

efforts. Michigan, which has a number of smaller leg-

acy cities, has embraced placemaking as an economic

development tool on the state level. After losing more

than 800,000 jobs, Michigan decided that it needed a

new approach reflecting changes in the global econ-

omy (Weinfeld 2016). Nonprofit organizations worked

with the state housing finance agency and other

stakeholders to launch the Sense of Place Council and

the MIplace initiative, which promote placemaking

to attract and retain talent in the state. Michigan has

incorporated placemaking principles into existing

economic development programs, and stakeholder

groups have created a placemaking toolkit and are

training local officials to make regional plans for

building quality places. Although Michigan’s program

provides few direct resources, the statewide embrace

of placemaking provides important morale-building

and technical support for local efforts to enhance the

quality of urban life.


STRATEGY IN ACTION: BETHLEHEM’S BIG OPPORTUNITY

When the Bethlehem Steel plant closed its doors in 1999, the city braced for devastating economic impacts. While the plant closure brought serious challenges to the community, some residents say that the city’s heyday is just now beginning. Without the noise and air pollution caused by the plant, Bethlehem is better poised to become an attractive place to live and work. The site of the former steel plant represented a number of opportunities and challenges—although the site was the largest brownfield in the country, it also created newly developable land along the city’s riverfront. The area was split into two zoning districts: a large industrial area and a smaller mixed-use entertainment district. A collaborative group of local partners, including Bethlehem Steel, Lehigh University, the city of Bethlehem, and a local arts nonprofit called

ArtsQuest, worked together to create a new vision for the site. Sands Casino Resort purchased much of the land in the entertainment district in 2007, remediated the site, and opened a casino and hotel. One of the blast furnaces from the steel mill was located within the entertainment district, and the casino pledged to keep it standing as a unique nod to the city’s past. ArtsQuest now maintains an arts and cultural campus on the site, including an outdoor amphitheater at the base of the stacks. This has been a significant draw for the region, bringing one million visitors in the site’s first five years of operation and playing host to Musikfest, the nation’s largest free music festival, which is estimated to produce a $55 million annual impact on the region’s economy.

SteelStacks Arts and Cultural Campus in Bethlehem won the 2017 Rudy Bruner Gold Medal for urban excellence in placemaking.

Credit: Ryan Hulvat


A public-private entity called Downtown Dayton Partnership is helping to revitalize the city’s central business district. Credit: Andy Snow

Strategy 5: Focus Regional Efforts on Rebuilding a Strong Downtown

Many small and midsize legacy cities have a great

asset in their historic downtowns. Even if the

downtown is no longer the center of business and

commerce, it is the public face of the entire region.

Unfortunately, for decades the downtowns of legacy

cities suffered substantial disinvestment, and many

have not fully recovered from the urban renewal and

highway-building programs that devastated their

cores. Extensive suburban and exurban communities

have grown up around those cores, and many jobs

and shopping opportunities have shifted out to

these locations.

Some cities have been content to attract businesses

to the broader region without regard to where they

locate. Akron pursued that kind of strategy, with

officials from the city, county, and regional chamber

of commerce working in partnership to attract foreign

investment. But without a clear policy privileging the

downtown or the city itself, suburban office parks

became the default location for many new businesses.

This led to problems for workers who depended on

public transit as well as rising office vacancy rates

downtown. Fortunately, Akron’s downtown organiza-

tion and other stakeholders are now working together

on a strategic plan for the urban core, and its current

political leaders understand the value of keeping eco-

nomic development within the city center. This

renewed focus on downtown as a business, residen-

tial, and entertainment center is likely to pay long-

term dividends for the city.


Numerous studies have found that the strength of a

region depends on the strength of its central city. An

analysis by the Brookings Institution found that the

vast majority of weak older industrial cities are in

economically stagnant metropolitan areas (Vey 2007,

17–19, 64). Strong cities are built around strong down-

towns, though in the future few downtowns will look

the way they did in the mid-twentieth century; trying

to re-create the downtowns of that era is likely to be

a losing battle. New technologies, suburbanization,

and car-centric commuting patterns mean that many

economic functions will remain outside of legacy-city

downtowns. But a downtown can still be a vibrant

mixed-use residential and entertainment area for the

region. The growing preference for living downtown

has spurred the conversion of outdated commercial

and industrial spaces into housing. Entertainment

districts around sports arenas, concert venues, and

theaters also serve as regional draws.

Many smaller cities have recognized the importance

of a strong urban core in spurring revitalization of city

neighborhoods and the region as a whole. Worcester

invested heavily and strategically in its downtown. The

removal of an old center-city mall led to a rethinking of

the downtown’s physical form, including restoration of

the traditional street grid, which had been disrupted

when the mall was built. The Massachusetts College

of Pharmacy and Health Sciences moved its campus

to downtown Worcester as well, bringing more people

to the streets and into downtown businesses. While a

college or university campus is not always a catalyst

for revitalization, simply having more people walking

around downtown helps create a sense of vibrancy

that can spark further development.

Not every city can duplicate Worcester’s catalytic

revitalization of its downtown. York, a much smaller

city, depended on more traditional strategies to bring

people and businesses back to the center. The plan

combined a Main Streets program with a business

improvement district (BID) to re-create the downtown

as a retail center that appeals to people with a wide

variety of interests and incomes. Muncie, another

small city, has focused on attracting young profession-

als through downtown development. Like York, Muncie

worked to create lively, interesting places and has

marketed them to the young professionals it hopes to

attract. Muncie chose that demographic specifically

because Ball State University, with a campus of over

20,000 students, is located in the city (Ball State Uni-

versity 2017). Muncie was among the study cities that

had the greatest growth in the population of young

professionals between 2009 and 2015. In other places,

empty nesters might be a more strategic demographic

to target for residential development. This population

often has higher incomes and may be downsizing from

homes in the suburbs, meaning they can pay more for

homes or condos downtown. No matter the demo-

graphic group, building mixed-use downtowns with

bars, restaurants, retail, and housing appears to be a

winning strategy for many cities.

In the most promising cases, the emphasis on

downtown expands beyond the city itself. In these cas-

es, regional economic development groups recognize

the importance of a strong downtown core for attract-

ing workers and employers. This has led to collabora-

tions among business leaders, nonprofit groups, and

governments to invest in the region’s downtowns. The

efforts in Syracuse, discussed in the Strategy in Action

on page 59, appear to be having an impact: it was one

of the few smaller legacy cities in the study to show

significant growth in the percentage of the population

working in the central city from 2009 to 2015.

Many smaller cities have recognized the

importance of a strong urban core in spur-

ring revitalization of city neighborhoods

and the region as a whole.


STRATEGY IN ACTION: DOWNTOWN SYRACUSE AS A REGIONAL ECONOMIC ENGINE

CenterState Corporation for Economic Opportunity (CEO) is the regional chamber of commerce and economic development organization that covers the city of Syracuse and the twelve-county surrounding region. Although focused on promoting development throughout the region, CenterState CEO and its business members recognized that a vibrant downtown is critical to the success of the entire area. Companies have come to realize that they can better retain a strong workforce if they are located in interesting places where workers want to be, leading them to choose downtown office space over suburban office parks. The center-city organization, the Downtown Committee of Syracuse, is a program of CenterState CEO, underscoring the organization’s commitment to building a strong downtown.

Due in part to CenterState CEO’s leadership, a number of actors have coalesced around reestablishing downtown as the economic center of the region. CenterState CEO, the state of New York, and other regional stakeholders

have invested heavily in Syracuse’s downtown to attract and retain local businesses. The local utility company, National Grid, created a grant program focusing on brownfield redevelopment in the downtown core. The state of New York invested heavily through its Restore New York Communities Initiative, which was established in 2006 to provide financial assistance to municipalities in revitalizing residential and commercial buildings. Syracuse received $15 million, which was dedicated to promoting mixed-use redevelopment in the city’s downtown core and inner-ring neighborhoods. The program allowed for the acquisition of a number of homes for redevelopment as affordable housing, guaranteeing that success in revitalizing the city could be shared by its lower-income residents as well. These funds, as well as other state dollars, were leveraged fivefold in private investment (Downtown Committee of Syracuse 2017). Paired with $50 million in investments in a connective corridor linking downtown and Syracuse University, the strategic investments in Syracuse’s downtown have reenergized the city’s core.

Public-private partnerships are revitalizing Syracuse’s downtown as the region’s economic center. Credit: iStock.com/PapaBear


Strategy 6: Engage in Community and Strategic Planning

One of the advantages of smaller legacy cities is that

their scale allows for greater community-wide consen-

sus building about the city’s future. However, because

resources are scarce in a small city, not all competing

visions can be implemented successfully. To make

sure that resources are allocated effectively and that

the community supports the revitalization strategies,

small cities must plan carefully for the future, using all

available data.

Such planning requires tough conversations and

realistic assessments about what the future might

hold. Most legacy cities are unlikely to regain their pre-

vious economic position or population size. Instead,

visioning needs to build on a city’s existing assets to

create stability and, hopefully, prosperity for its resi-

dents. In Dayton, where more than one in ten homes sit

abandoned, the city’s “Green and Gold Strategy” looks

realistically at the region’s lack of population growth

and projects what the city’s urban fabric will look like

in the future. One neighborhood with extremely high

vacancy levels was reimagined as a network of parks

and urban gardens—the “green” strategy. At the same

time, the city is working to retain and actively bolster

assets like its intact historic business district and re-

maining small manufacturers—the “gold” strategy. In

Flint, another city with extremely high rates of housing

vacancy and regional population loss, the city crafted

a new master plan to reflect its current condition. One

component aims to eliminate blight, or deteriorated

vacant buildings, by educating residents about the im-

pact of blight, the city’s plans to combat it, and ways

that private citizens can be involved in those efforts.

Acknowledging the loss of population, Flint’s plan also

has changed the zoning of some neighborhoods to

encourage conversion to green space.

Even small legacy cities that have not experienced the

extreme population losses seen in Dayton and Flint

can benefit from carefully considering how best to

allocate limited resources. Outside organizations like

community development corporations or anchor insti-

tutions often have interest in particular neighborhoods

or corridors and may be willing to contribute their

resources to planning efforts for those areas. Many

cities have nonprofit or other private organizations

working on downtown revitalization, and they may

have independent resources available for strategic

planning. When this is the case, city government can

instead focus staff time and financial resources on

making sure that neighborhoods have solid, commu-

nity-based plans. In cities where new housing is being

built, this kind of planning is especially important

in ensuring that residents’ voices are heard as their

neighborhoods change.

Dayton’s Green and Gold Strategy balances downtown economic

development with green space such as Riverscape Metro Park.

Credit: Andy Snow Photography


STRATEGY IN ACTION: PROMOTING NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT IN GRAND RAPIDS

Grand Rapids is fortunate among small and midsize legacy cities in that it reaps the benefits of a private sector that has coalesced around promoting economic and downtown development. Grand Action, a coalition of community and civic leaders from the private sector, spearheaded the visioning and implementation of much of the city’s downtown revitalization. The City of Grand Rapids Planning Department helped to guide this process, by ensuring that the voices of average community members were also a part of the downtown discussion.

With the strong role of the private sector in promoting downtown, the city government is able to focus much of its efforts on neighborhoods outside of the core. Planning staff believe they are better able to represent the community’s interests in working with developers when they engage in planning processes that empower residents to communicate a vision for their neighborhoods. In many cases, plans are devised entirely by the neighborhoods themselves with only strategic and technical support coming from city staff. The city works with neighborhoods to create “Neighborhood Pattern Workbooks” to establish modern zoning overlays that fit with current needs and the community’s desires. The development community has seen value in having community-driven neighborhood plans, because developers emerge from the process with a clearer sense of neighborhood residential needs and concerns, which are likely to be incorporated into the final development product. Also, developers are less likely to be met with challenges through the public approval process. City staff sees real value in this process as well; the city is able to expedite approvals for even major development projects because the already agreed-upon development guidelines from the neighborhood mean that they do not have to go through the typical approval process.

Grand Rapids’ private sector coalesced to promote economic

development. Credit: iStock.com/huePhotography


Strategy 7: Stabilize Distressed Neighborhoods One of the greatest liabilities for smaller legacy

cities is widespread neighborhood disinvestment

and the resulting declines in physical structures and

quality of life. Cities have been contending with these

challenges for decades, but the wave of foreclosures

and abandonment in the Great Recession significantly

compounded the problem. Housing vacancies not re-

lated to usual market activity increased by nearly 100

percent on average among smaller legacy cities and

grew substantially more in some severely distressed

cities. This change was not limited to neighborhoods

already experiencing decline prior to the recession;

the foundations of once-stable middle- and work-

ing-class areas were shaken as foreclosures and

vacancies reduced property values and kicked off

the cycle of disinvestment.

After engaging in community-wide planning, the crit-

ical next step in combating disinvestment is to create

and carry out a series of interventions to stabilize

struggling neighborhoods and prevent further decline.

The planners must identify which neighborhoods need

particular interventions and investments, based on

an assessment of existing assets. In some cities, the

infrastructure for intervention is already in place: the

local government, community development corpora-

tions, nonprofit and for-profit developers, and other

local stakeholders have the capacity to address the

needs of different neighborhoods. In other places, the

organizations available for intervention may require

additional support or may even need to be created

from scratch.

Stabilizing distressed neighborhoods is no small task.

Just in terms of housing, a whole series of comple-

mentary interventions is required: critical repairs of

occupied homes, rehabilitation of vacant homes, and,

in some cases, targeted demolition. Beyond housing,

distressed neighborhoods require interventions to

address their systemic challenges. No single organiza-

tion can take on this task alone; strong leadership and

the community partnerships discussed above are nec-

essary to ensure this complex process is successful.

The Idora Neighborhood Association is a grassroots organization

working with the City of Youngstown and other partners

to revitalize the area. Credit: Youngstown Neighborhood

Development Corporation


STRATEGY IN ACTION: STABILIZING YOUNGSTOWN’S NEIGHBORHOODS

Youngstown, Ohio, has used data to pinpoint struggling neighborhoods and then leveraged a variety of financial resources to triage housing

in poor condition (before left, after right). Credit: Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation

Youngstown has some of the most distressed neighborhoods of any of the smaller legacy cities in the study. More than one out of every ten homes in the city is vacant and likely abandoned, creating significant barriers to building new or rehabilitating market-rate housing in the city. In the face of these serious challenges, the City of Youngstown and the Raymond J. Wean Foundation created the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation (YNDC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to community revitalization. YNDC focuses on key neighborhoods in the city and pairs targeted housing rehabilitation and demolition with comprehensive community development activities like business development, community organizing, and urban farming.

While YNDC’s focus on stabilizing neighborhoods extends beyond housing specifically, their approach to rebuilding housing markets in struggling neighborhoods is of particular interest. Housing

values in Youngstown are extremely low, making market-rate development very difficult without subsidy. YNDC uses extensive data collection to analyze which neighborhoods could support market-rate development and which will require additional interventions. In neighborhoods where it is appropriate, YNDC uses HOME Investment Partnership or Community Development Block Grant dollars to do repairs on occupied homes. In other cases, it works with the county land bank to acquire vacant properties for rehabilitation and resale. YNDC has its own construction crew, which helps keep costs low, allowing them to rehabilitate without subsidy beyond the donation of homes. The for-sale units are very popular, and are mostly sold to pre-qualified buyers from a waitlist. All homes are listed on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) even if they are presold in order to build comparables (comps) for future appraisals in the neighborhood. Staff reports that the private market has indeed moved in after their efforts, furthering revitalization efforts.


Strategy 8: Strategically Leverage State Policies

Few successful smaller legacy cities have been able to

revitalize without state assistance. The huge chal-

lenges facing these cities require more resources than

they can generate on their own, particularly in the

face of economic and population decline. States can

help smaller legacy cities revitalize by providing direct

resources, economic incentives, and technical assis-

tance. The strategies discussed above feature states

that offered direct financial assistance, like the Re-

store NY program, and technical and capacity-building

efforts, like the MIplace initiative. While those pro-

grams were not created just for smaller cities, some

states, like Massachusetts, have specifically targeted

struggling small and midsize cities for state assis-

tance. Through the sustained advocacy of MassINC,

a statewide policy think tank, the Massachusetts

Gateway Cities program provides special resources for

cities with populations between 35,000 and 250,000

and with median incomes and educational attainment

levels below the state averages. These cities qualify

for special state programs that work to attract entre-

preneurs and potential residents. New Jersey has also

created city-type designations that allow businesses

moving into certain economically distressed cities

to qualify for special state incentives. Although the

program’s design and execution are problematic, the

notion of tying economic development strategies and

incentives to a city’s distress level has value. State

policies that help or hinder legacy city revitalization is

explored more deeply in Mallach (2017).

It is important to stress that state policies alone

cannot bring about revitalization, and cities must use

these resources strategically to successfully tackle

their challenges. A large infusion of state resourc-

es will have maximum impact only if it is deployed

carefully, based on assessments of the city’s opportu-

nities and challenges. In Ohio, for example, many cities

The state of Ohio is supporting the redevelopment of the Dayton

Arcade, which sat empty for nearly three decades, through state

historic tax credits. Credit: Ohio Redevelopment Projects

and counties have used state programs promoting

brownfield remediation and land banking. The Clean

Ohio Revitalization Fund made grants to municipalities

for cleanup and redevelopment of brownfield sites.

Research by Greater Ohio Policy Center (2013) found

that the state’s investments in cities led to significant

gains in annual tax revenue, economic outputs, and

job creation. Additionally, Ohio’s county land banks,

authorized by state legislation in response to the

foreclosure crisis, have created organizations and sys-

tems that are responsive to their local contexts within

the framework laid out by the state. As these cases

illustrate, if smaller legacy cities deploy the strate-

gies related to leadership and planning, they can take

better advantage of helpful state policies.


CHAPTER 5

Conclusion and Recommendations

Small and midsize legacy cities face significant challenges.

But despite their difficulties, we must not allow these

communities to decline. They still contribute to their

regions and to the country as a whole in their economic

outputs and human capital. They also offer opportunities

for policy and program innovations that can benefit

legacy cities of all sizes. These cities must reimagine their

function, form, and place in the world with the goal of

eventually building economies that provide all residents

with access to good jobs and quality of life. Many of the

strategies detailed in this report implicitly acknowledge

the need to simultaneously address equity challenges

while supporting economic expansion.

Kalamazoo was the only city in the

report where unemployment declined

significantly and median household

income grew between 2009 and 2015.

Credit: Neal Conway, Communications

Manager, City of Kalamazoo


Some of the stronger legacy cities in this study have

already made important strides in reaching this goal

by putting in place a new generation of leaders across

sectors, by training low-skilled workers, or by revitaliz-

ing their downtowns.

In cities not yet on this track, local leaders from all

sectors, ranging from grassroots activists to corporate

CEOs, will need to work together to find realistic ways

forward. In this process they may have to face the fact

that the old ways of doing things and earlier visions of

the city are no longer realistic. The following recom-

mendations, which are based on our observations of

stronger cities and of promising strategies, can guide

cities charting a path toward revitalization. These

strategies build upon each other, with the first two

being particularly essential to achieving the others.

Build Civic Capacity and Talent.

• An injection of outside perspective can help

kick-start revitalization efforts. People hiring for

key positions in local government, economic and

community development organizations, anchor

institutions, or corporate community outreach

should look beyond the “usual suspects” and

consider candidates from outside of the region.

• Revitalization efforts will be successful only

if they are sustained by the next generation of

local leaders. Fellowship programs that draw

recent graduates to work on management-level

projects in local government or other important

sectors can help build the bench of committed

local talent.

Encourage a Shared Public- and Private-

Sector Vision.

• Cities in which leaders from the public, private,

nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors work

together for change frequently see the best

results. Organizations or individuals with the

power to rally others (local philanthropists

or executives of local large businesses, for

instance) should convene stakeholders,

particularly from the private sector, to discuss

how and why they should be involved in

revitalizing the city.

• Long-term planning does not have to be led

by local government alone. Private-sector

leaders can coordinate or fund plans for

economic development, housing, or downtown

improvements as long as they work closely with

local government officials to ensure public input

and accountability.

• Private-sector and nonprofit leaders can

have significant impact by designing creative

financing mechanisms or sources of funding for

revitalization efforts.

In Lancaster, one of the highest-performing cities in the report,

a public-private partnership created a 15-year economic

development plan that the local government has almost fully

executed. Credit: Jon Bilous/Alamy Stock Photo


Expand Opportunities for Low-Income Workers.

• Economic growth alone is not enough to improve

opportunities for a city’s low-income residents.

Local leaders with a mission to increase equity,

alleviate poverty, or achieve social justice

should consider how revitalization will affect

low-income residents and try to ensure that

economic growth is shared broadly.

• In many cases, low-income residents cannot

share in economic growth because they do

not have access to new jobs. Local agencies

dealing with workforce development and

poverty reduction should research the barriers

to employment for low-income residents, such

as lack of appropriate skills or lack of access to

transportation.

• Stakeholders in many smaller legacy cities

report that the biggest barrier to employment

is that residents do not have the appropriate

skills for the jobs that are available. Employers

should be involved in workforce development

efforts to create training programs for the skills

local companies need. Nonprofit economic

development or business advocacy organizations

can serve as a clearinghouse for such efforts.

• Workforce development benefits the city as a

whole, not just its low-income or low-skilled

residents. Such programs should be considered

a critical economic development issue that

makes the community more attractive to

employers and entrepreneurs.

Build on an Authentic Sense of Place.

• The link between quality of place and the ability

to attract and retain talent is increasingly clear.

Placemaking should be considered an important

part of cities’ economic development strategies.

• Activities that improve the quality of life can be

integrated into infrastructure projects and other

community development efforts that are already

being planned. For example, when the city

repaves a road, it can install a new bike lane, or

when green sewer upgrades are being installed,

new urban green spaces can be set aside.

• While local stakeholders should spearhead

placemaking efforts, state support is valuable

in sharing best practices and providing financial

resources. State governments should expand

their economic development portfolios to help

communities compete for talent.

Focus Regional Efforts on Rebuilding a Strong

Downtown.

• In the future, the downtowns of smaller legacy

cities are unlikely to look like those of the past.

Cities should encourage a mix of uses, including

housing, to create downtowns that appeal to

people who want to live there and to regional

residents who will work and play there.

• Downtown revitalization may happen slowly or in

leaps and bounds. Cities should take advantage

of opportunities for catalytic projects but

should move forward incrementally when those

opportunities are not available.

• Stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds

are interested in downtowns. Revitalization of

the downtown can help create cross-sectoral

partnerships that can then extend to other

projects or parts of the city.


Engage in Community and Strategic Planning.

• In a weak market, any reduction in a developer’s

costs may make it more likely that a project will

be built. Consider ways to update zoning codes

or use planning and development reviews to

streamline processes without compromising

the outcome.

• Planning can be done by different actors in

the community. If a nonprofit or private-

sector entity leads the downtown planning,

local government may be freed up to focus on

neighborhood planning.

• Cities with extensive population loss should

consider what urban form is most compatible

with their current population. Programs to

eliminate blight and reuse vacant land can help

engage the community in planning for the future.

Stabilize Distressed Neighborhoods.

• Community planning is just the first step in

stabilizing neighborhoods. After the plan is

complete, city leaders must find the resources to

carry it out.

• The scale of the challenges facing a city

and its neighborhoods can be daunting. The

city government and its partners, including

neighborhood development organizations,

should act methodically, using data to make

decisions.

• For long-term stability, housing markets must be

able to function without subsidies. Government,

philanthropists, and nonprofit organizations

should invest in rebuilding the market so that

the private sector will move back in.

Strategically Leverage State Policies.

• States can help smaller legacy cities forge a

path forward. State support can take many

forms, including direct resources, incentives,

and capacity-building programs.

In many states, smaller legacy cities face

challenges not shared by nearby communities.

Where feasible, states should provide targeted

assistance to smaller cities that are in economic

or fiscal distress.

• State resources alone cannot solve the problems

of smaller legacy cities. Local leaders must

leverage state dollars and other resources to

enhance the city’s own resources and capacity.

Like many successful musicians

who emerged from Ohio, the Black

Keys from Akron remain loyal to their

hometown. Credit: Piper Ferguson


GROUPINGS

Groupings were calculated by looking both at current

condition in the year 2015 and trends from 2000 to

2009 and from 2009 to 2015. To begin, each city was

ranked compared to other cities in the study on each

of the following indicators listed in the adjacent chart,

with “1” as the best performing and “24” as the lowest

performing. The ranks for each category were then

added together to create a city condition score and

two city trend scores, one for 2000 to 2009 and one

for 2009 to 2015. Some indicators, as shown in the

adjacent table, were not included in the condition rank

because they represent regional or size differences

that are not comparable between cities in terms

of performance.

To create the final composite score, the following

formula was used:

Composite Score =

4*(Condition Score) + 2000–2009 Trend Score +

1.5*(2009–2015 Trend Score)

This formula weighted current condition more than

trend, and also weighted more recent trends more

than earlier trends. These scores were then sorted

from lowest to highest, and assigned a rank—the

highest ranks went to cities with the lowest composite

scores and the lowest ranks went to the cities with

the highest scores.

Indicators Used in

Condition Score?

Used in Trend

Score?

Demographics

Population %

Foreign-Born Population % %

% of Population

that Works in City% %

Young Professional

Population% %

Economic Health

Unemployment % %

Median Household

Income% %

Poverty Rate % %

% of Population

with BA+ % %

Labor Force

Participation Rate% %

Housing

Owner Occupancy Rate % %

% Units with a Mortgage % %

Median Rent %

Median Housing Value %

Other Vacancy Rate % %

APPENDIX

Rankings



References

Ball State University. 2017. “Fact Book.” Muncie, IN: Ball State University. http://cms.bsu.edu/about/factbook.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2015a. “Employment Projections: 2014-24 Summary.” Press release. Washington, DC: Bureau of Labor Statistics. December 8. www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.nr0.htm.

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Clark, Partrick. 2016. “Red State Homes Are Luring Young Blue Buyers Inland.” Bloomberg News, December 5, 2016. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-05/red-state-homes-are-luring-young-blue-buyers-inland.

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https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p25-1140.pdf

https://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p25-1140.pdf


This report benefited from the contributions of a num-

ber of experts, researchers, and local stakeholders and

would not have been possible without the generous

support of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, in partic-

ular the enthusiasm and editing expertise of Maureen

Clarke and the valuable guidance and persistence of

Jessie Grogan and Amy Cotter. The authors would like

to thank Lavea Brachman for her invaluable input and

expertise in framing and conceptualizing this report.

Alan Mallach’s guidance and expertise throughout the

course of this research helped to strengthen the re-

port’s data collection and analysis. Additionally, former

Greater Ohio Policy Center staff and interns Marianne

Eppig and Colleen Durfee contributed to data collec-

tion for this report.

The authors would also like to thank other researchers

and practitioners who shared thoughts and feed-

back about smaller legacy cities generally, as well as

early report findings, including Jeremiah Boyle of the

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Anna Steigler of the

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and Will Lambe of the

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. This report benefit-

ted immensely from the contributions of interviewees

from the cities and states under review, and a full list

of those contributors is listed here.

Acknowledgments

Tarik Abdelazim, Binghamton, New York

Ian Beniston, Youngstown, Ohio

Dorla Bonner and Rebekah Kik, Kalamazoo, Michigan

Jim Connolly, Center for Middletown Studies at Ball

State University

Cindy Daley, Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania

Bill D’Avignon, Youngstown, Ohio

Jesse Ergott, Scranton, Pennsylvania

Rocky Ferraro and Sean Maguire, Albany, New York

Scott Ford, South Bend, Indiana

Ben Forman, MassINC

Dan Gilmartin, Michigan Municipal League

John Gower, Dayton, Ohio

Sonia Huntzinger, York, Pennsylvania

Dean Kaplan, PFM

Alicia Karner, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Courtney Knox and Danielle Lewinski, Flint, Michigan

John Kromer

Steve Lisaukas, Springfield, Massachusetts

Jonathan Logan, Dominic Robinson, and Merike Treier,

Syracuse, New York

Bernie Lynch, Lowell, Massachusetts

Tim McGourthy, Worcester, Massachusetts

Joe Myers, Camden, New Jersey

Amy Odum and Jeff Sprague, Lima, Ohio

Randy Patterson, Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Suzanne Schultz, Grand Rapids, Michigan

Jason Segedy, Akron, Ohio

Antony Seppi, Hamilton, Ohio

Scott Unger, Allentown, Pennsylvania

Vicki Veach, Muncie, Indiana


ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Torey Hollingsworth is the manager of research and policy at Greater

Ohio Policy Center, where she manages and carries out research projects,

contributes to policy development, and works with partner organizations

statewide. Torey’s current work focuses on understanding the challenges

and opportunities for revitalization in Ohio’s smaller legacy cities, and she

is the author of multiple reports on the topic. Torey previously worked on

community reinvestment and housing policy on the federal level. She holds

a Masters of City and Regional Planning from The Ohio State University and

a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Chicago.

Alison Goebel is Executive Director of the Greater Ohio Policy Center.

She is responsible for charting the center’s strategic direction, directing

the research, advocacy, and outreach teams, and securing resources for

this work. She is the author of a number of research reports and policy

briefs related to the revitalization of weak-market cities, transportation

funding, and local governance structures in Ohio. She holds a Ph.D. and

M.A. in anthropology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,

and a B.A. from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

POLICY FOCUS REPORT SERIES

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Land Policy to address timely public policy issues relating to land use, land

markets, and property taxation. Each report is designed to bridge the gap

between theory and practice by combining research findings, case studies,

and contributions from scholars in a variety of academic disciplines, and

information from professional practitioners, local officials, and citizens in

diverse communities.

Front cover:

Corona Arch, Utah (top). Courtesy of the

Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands

Administration.

Catalina State Park, Arizona (bottom).

Courtesy of Sonoran Institute.

Back Cover:

Stockade Block rangelands in Oregon.

Courtesy of Oregon Department of

State Lands.

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ABOUT THIS REPORT

Political wisdom has long observed, “As goes Ohio, so goes

the nation.” While pundits can respectfully disagree about

the enduring truth of that wisdom these days, the state is

still as close to a microcosm of the rest of the country as

any. Its mix of rural and urban areas mirrors the rest of the

country, as does the state’s collection of small, medium,

and large cities and towns. During my tenure as executive

director of Greater Ohio Policy Center (GOPC), from 2008

until 2016, it became increasingly clear that Ohio’s 20 small

and midsize cities were falling further and further behind

the larger municipalities and thus reflecting a similar

dynamic across the United States. These small to midsize

metros constitute a third of Ohio’s population and generate

a third of the state’s gross domestic product, and their

impact on the state’s prosperity as a whole is sizable. Their

struggles affect those who live in these cities as well as

those who don’t, and this pattern repeats in the country

at large. For that reason, GOPC developed an increasingly

intense interest in the future of these cities beyond

Ohio’s borders, across the Rust Belt—from Akron, Ohio, to

Syracuse, New York, and from Worcester, Massachusetts,

to Flint, Michigan. GOPC launched this report to understand

conditions and trends in these places and to learn lessons

from their unique challenges and accomplishments.


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Copyright © 2017 Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

All rights reserved.

Front Cover (top):

The Aiken Street Bridge and industrial skyline of Lowell,

Massachusetts. Credit: iStock.com/DenisTangneyJr

Front Cover (bottom):

Musikfest Café with a view of the former steel stacks in

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Credit: Jeff Reeder Photography

Back Cover:

Hamilton, Ohio, before and after downtown revitalization

efforts. Credit: Consortium for Ongoing Reinvestment

Based on case studies, extensive research, and data

analysis, this report found these smaller and midsize

places struggling after the Great Recession—with

fewer resources to deal with long-term poverty, chronic

unemployment, continued population decline, and other

related challenges—even while they attempt to leverage

the richness of their significant assets of unique physical

spaces, economic niches, sense of community and place,

and human capital. With its eight strategies, this timely

and extremely informative report lays out a compelling,

action-oriented framework for these places that are so

critical to the economic and social future of this country,

to help them gain sounder footing in the next decade of

the twenty-first century.

Lavea Brachman, JD, MCP

Vice President of Programs

Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation

Coauthor, Regenerating America’s Legacy Cities

(Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2013)

ISBN 978-1-55844-370-9 (paper)

ISBN 978-1-55844-371-6 (PDF)


ABOUT GREATER OHIO POLICY CENTER

Greater Ohio Policy Center (GOPC), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization

based in Columbus and operating statewide, develops and advances

policies and practices that value our urban cores and metropolitan

regions as economic drivers and preserve Ohio’s open space and farm-

land. Through education, research, and outreach, GOPC strives to create a

political and policy climate receptive to new economic and governmental

structures that advance sustainable development and economic growth.

ABOUT THE LINCOLN INSTITUTE OF LAND POLICY www.lincolninst.edu

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through

the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private

operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute

researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution

to economic, social, and environmental challenges. Through education,

training, publications, and events, we integrate theory and practice to

inform public policy decisions worldwide. With locations in Cambridge,

Washington, Phoenix, and Beijing, we organize our work in seven major

areas: Planning and Urban Form, Valuation and Taxation, International

and Institute-Wide Initiatives, Latin America and the Caribbean, People’s

Republic of China, the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, and the

Center for Community Investment.


mailto:lincolnorders%40pssc.com?subject=







TOREY HOLLINGSWORTH AND ALISON GOEBEL

POLICY FOCUS REPORT LINCOLN INSTITUTE OF LAND POLICY GREATER OHIO POLICY CENTER

Revitalizing America’s Smaller Legacy Cities

Strategies for Postindustrial Success from Gary to Lowell

ISBN 978-1-55844-370-9 (paper)

ISBN 978-1-55844-371-6 (PDF)


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America’s smaller legacy cities are essential to the well-being and economic prosperity of their states and the nation as

a whole. Places such as Akron and Allentown—older industrial centers with populations of less than 200,000 located

primarily in the Midwest and Northeast—face common challenges, from poverty and disinvestment in neighborhoods to

workforces whose skills do not match employer needs. Yet some play enduring roles in the national economy, and many

more are important to their state and region. In Ohio, for example, residents of metropolitan areas around small and midsize

legacy cities make up nearly a third of the state’s population and produce a third of the state’s gross domestic product.

While researchers and local leaders have identified strategies to jump-start revitalization in larger legacy cities like

Pittsburgh and Baltimore, less attention has been paid to how these approaches might transfer to Muncie or Worcester.

This report fills that gap. Combining rigorous research and data analysis with practical recommendations, the authors

identify eight replicable strategies that are helping smaller legacy cities find their competitive edge and transform into

thriving, sustainable communities:

Richly illustrated with case studies, graphics, and photographs, this report will be useful to practitioners looking for tools

to stimulate economic regrowth in smaller legacy cities: mayors and other local government officials; leaders of economic

and community development organizations; city planners; community outreach staff at hospital systems, universities, or

financial institutions; or researchers working on legacy city issues or economic restructuring in the industrial heartland.

• Build Civic Capacity and Talent

• Encourage a Shared Public- and


• Expand Opportunities for Low-Income Workers

• Build on an Authentic Sense of Place

• Focus Regional Efforts on Rebuilding

a Strong Downtown

• Engage in Community and Strategic Planning

• Stabilize Distressed Neighborhoods

• Strategically Leverage State Policies

Revitalizing America’s Smaller Legacy CitiesStrategies for Postindustrial Success from Gary to Lowell


Revitalizing America's Smaller Legacy Cities: Strategies ...

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